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ROMANCE 

TWO  LECTURES  BY  11 

SIR  WALTER ' 


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THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

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OF  CALIFORNIA 
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THE  LOUIS  CLARK  VANUXEM  FOUNDATION 
LECTURES  FOR  1914-1915 


Qltje  iCnutfi  (Elark  Hattuxpm  3Fo«nliiattntt 

was  established  in  1913  with  a  bequest  of  $25,000 
under  the  will  of  Louis  Clark  Vanuxem,  of  the 
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dation is  to  be  used  for  a  series  of  public  lectures 
delivered  in  Princeton  annually,  at  least  one  half 
of  which  shall  be  on  subjects  of  current  scientific 
interest.  The  lectures  are  to  be  published  and 
distributed  among  schools  and  libraries  generally. 


The  following  lectures  have  already  been  pub- 
lished or  are  in  press: 

1912-13     The  Theory  of  Permutable  Functions,  by 
Vito  Volterra 

1913-14  Lectures  delivered  in  connection  with  the 
dedication  of  the  Graduate  College  of 
Princeton  University  by  Emile  Boutroux, 
Alois  Riehl,  A.  D.  Godley,  and  Arthur 
Shipley 

1914-15     Romance,   by   Sir   Walter   Raleigh 

1915-16  A  Critique  of  the  Theory  of  Evolu- 
tion, by  Thomas  Hunt  Morgan 


LOUIS  CLARK  VANUXEM  FOUNDATION 


ROMANCE 


TWO  LECTURES  BY 


SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH 

M.A.,  PROFESSOR  Or  EITGLISH  LITERATURE  IN  THE 

UNIVERSITY  or  OXFORD,  FELLOW  OF 

MERTON  COLLEGE 


LECTURES  DELIVERED  AT  PRINCETON 
UNIVERSITY,  MAY  4th  AND  5th,  1915 


PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
PRINCETON 

LONDON :  HUMPHREY  MILFORD 

OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

1916 


Copyright,  1916,  by 
Princeton  University  Press 

Published  October.  1916 


1^ 


an 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  ROMANCE 

The  period  of  English  pohtical  history  which 
falls  between  Pitt's  acceptance  of  office  as 
prime  minister,  in  1783,  and  the  passing  of  the 
Reform  Bill,  in  1832,  is  a  period  rich  in  char- 
acter and  event.  The  same  period  of  fifty  years 
is  one  of  the  most  crowded  epochs  of  our  na- 
tional literature.  In  1783  William  Blake  pro- 
duced his  Poetical  Sketches,  and  George  Crabbe 
published  The  Village.  In  1832  Scott  died, 
not  many  months  after  the  death  of  Goethe. 
Between  these  two  dates  a  great  company  of 
English  writers  produced  a  literature  of  im- 
mense bulk,  and  of  almost  endless  diversity  of 
character.  Yet  one  dominant  strain  in  that 
literature  has  commonly  been  allowed  to  give 
a  name  to  the  whole  period,  and  it  is  often 
called  the  Age  of  the  Romantic  Revival. 

We  do  not  name  other  notable  periods  of 
our  literature  in  this  fashion.    The  name  itself 


976299 


2  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

contains  a  theory,  and  so  marks  the  rise  of  a 
new  philosophical  and  aesthetic  criticism.  It 
attempts  to  describe  as  well  as  to  name,  and 
attaches  significance  not  to  kings,  or  great 
authors,  but  to  the  kind  of  writing  which  flour- 
ished conspicuously  in  that  age.  A  less  am- 
bitious and  much  more  secure  name  would  have 
been  the  Age  of  George  III ;  but  this  name  has 
seldom  been  used,  perhaps  because  the  writers 
of  his  time  who  reverenced  King  George  III 
were  not  very  many  in  number.  The  danger 
of  basing  a  name  on  a  theory  of  literature  is 
that  the  theory  may  very  easily  be  superseded, 
or  may  prove  to  be  inadequate,  and  then  the 
name,  having  become  immutable  by  the  force 
of  custom,  is  left  standing,  a  monument  of 
ancient  error.  The  terminology  of  the  sciences, 
which  pretends  to  be  exact  and  colourless, 
is  always  being  reduced  to  emptiness  by  the 
progress  of  knowledge.  The  thing  that  struck 
the  first  observer  is  proved  to  be  less  important 
than  he  thought  it.  Scientific  names,  for  all 
their  air  of  learned  universality,  are  merely 
fossilized  impressions,  stereotyped  portraits  of 
a  single  aspect.    The  decorous  obscurity  of  the 


THE   ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  3 

ancient  languages  is  used  to  conceal  an  im- 
mense diversity  of  principle.  Mammal,  amphi- 
bian, coleoptera,  dicotyledon,  cryptogam, — all 
these  terms,  which,  if  they  were  translated  into 
the  language  of  a  peasant,  would  be  seen  to 
record  very  simple  observations,  yet  do  lend  a 
kind  of  formal  majesty  to  ignorance. 

So  it  is  with  the  vocabulary  of  literary  criti- 
cism :  the  first  use  of  a  name,  because  the  name 
was  coined  by  someone  who  felt  the  need  of  it, 
is  often  striking  and  instructive ;  the  impression 
is  fresh  and  new.  Then  the  freshness  wears  off 
it,  and  the  name  becomes  an  outworn  print,  a 
label  that  serves  only  to  recall  the  memory  of 
past  travel.  What  was  created  for  the  needs 
of  thought  becomes  a  thrifty  device,  useful  only 
to  save  thinking.  The  best  way  to  restore  the 
habit  of  thinking  is  to  do  away  with  the  names. 
The  word  Romantic  loses  almost  all  its  mean- 
ing and  value  when  it  is  used  to  characterize 
whole  periods  of  our  literature.  Landor  and 
Crabbe  belong  to  a  Romantic  era  of  poetry; 
Steele  and  Sterne  wrote  prose  in  an  age  which 
set  before  itself  the  Classic  ideal.  Yet  there 
is  hardly  any  distinctively  Classical  beauty  in 


4  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

English  verse  which  cannot  be  exemphfied  from 
the  poetry  of  Landor  and  Crabbe;  and  there 
are  not  very  many  characteristics  of  Romantic 
prose  which  find  no  illustration  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Steele  and  Sterne.  Nevertheless,  the 
very  name  of  romance  has  wielded  such  a  power 
in  human  affairs,  and  has  so  habitually  im- 
pressed the  human  imagination,  that  time  is  not 
misspent  in  exhibiting  its  historical  bearings. 
These  great  vague  words,  invented  to  facilitate 
reference  to  whole  centuries  of  human  history 
— Middle  Ages,  Renaissance,  Protestant  Re- 
formation, Revival  of  Romance — are  very 
often  invoked  as  if  they  were  something  ulti- 
mate, as  if  the  names  themselves  were  a  suffi- 
cient explanation  of  all  that  they  include.  So 
an  imperfect  terminology  is  used  to  gain  es- 
teem for  an  artificial  and  rigid  conception  of 
things  which  were  as  fluid  as  life  itself.  The 
Renaissance,  for  instance,  in  its  strict  original 
meaning,  is  the  name  for  that  renewed  study  of 
the  classical  literatures  which  manifested  itself 
throughout  the  chief  countries  of  Europe  in 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries.  In 
Italy,  where  the  movement  had  its  origin,  no 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANXE  5 

single  conspicuous  event  can  be  used  to  date  it. 
The  traditions  inherited  from  Greece  and  Rome 
had  never  lost  their  authority;  but  with  the 
increase  of  wealth  and  leisure  in  the  citj^  re- 
publics they  were  renewed  and  strengthened. 
From  being  remnants  and  memories  they  be- 
came live  models;  Latin  poetry  w^as  revived, 
and  Italian  poetry  was  disciplined  by  the  an- 
cient masters.  But  the  Renaissance,  when  it 
reached  the  shores  of  England,  so  far  from 
giving  new  life  to  the  literature  it  found  there, 
at  first  degraded  it.  It  killed  the  splendid 
prose  school  of  Malory  and  Berners,  and  prose 
did  not  run  clear  again  for  a  century.  It  be- 
wildered and  confused  the  minds  of  poets,  and 
blending  itself  with  the  national  tradition,  pro- 
duced the  rich  lawlessness  of  the  English  six- 
teenth century.  It  was  a  strong  tributary  to 
the  stream  of  our  national  literature;  but  the 
popular  usage,  which  assigns  all  that  is  good  in 
the  English  literature  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  to  a  mysterious  event 
called  the  Renaissance,  is  merely  absurd.  Mod- 
ern scholars,  if  they  are  forced  to  find  a  begin- 
ning for  modern  literature,  would  prefer  to 


6  THE    ORIGIN   OF    ROMANCE 

date  it  from  the  wonderful  outburst  of  ver- 
nacular poetry  in  the  latter  part  of  the  twelfth 
century,  and,  if  they  must  name  a  birthplace, 
would  claim  attention  for  the  Court  of  King 
Henry  II. 

In  some  of  its  aspects,  the  Romantic  revival 
may  be  exhibited  as  a  natural  consequence  of 
the  Renaissance.  Classical  scholarship  at  first 
scorned  the  vernacular  literatures,  and  did  all 
its  work  of  criticism  and  imitation  in  the  Latin 
tongue.  By  degrees  the  lesson  was  widened, 
and  applied  to  the  modern  languages.  Study ; 
imitation  in  Latin ;  extension  of  classical  usages 
and  principles  to  modern  literature, — these  were 
the  regular  stages  in  the  progress  of  the  classi- 
cal influence.  When  the  poets  of  France  and 
England,  to  name  no  others,  had  learned  as 
much  as  they  were  able  and  willing  to  learn 
from  the  masters  of  Greece  and  Rome,  the 
work  of  the  Renaissance  was  done.  By  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  there  was  no 
notable  kind  of  Greek  or  Latin  literature — 
historical,  philosophical,  poetical;  epic,  elegy, 
ode,  satire — which  had  not  worthy  disciples  and 
rivals  in  the  literatures  of  France  and  England. 


THE   ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  7 

Nothing  remained  to  do  but  to  go  further 
afield  and  seek  for  new  masters.  These  might 
easily  have  been  found  among  the  poets  and 
prophets  of  the  East,  and  not  a  few  notable 
writers  of  the  time  began  to  forage  in  that  di- 
rection. But  the  East  was  too  remote  and 
strange,  and  its  languages  were  too  little 
laiown,  for  this  attempt  to  be  carried  far;  the 
imitation  of  Chinese  and  Persian  models  was 
practised  chiefly  by  way  of  fantasy  and  joke. 
The  study  of  the  neglected  and  forgotten  mat- 
ter of  mediaeval  times,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
undertaken  by  serious  scholars.  The  progress 
of  the  mediaeval  influence  reproduced  very 
exactly  the  successive  phases  of  the  Classical 
Renaissance.  At  first  there  was  study;  and 
books  like  Sainte  Palaye's  Memoirs  of 
Ancient  Chivalry,  and  Paul  Henri  Mallet's 
Northern  Antiquities,  enjoyed  a  European 
reputation.  Then  followed  the  period  of  for- 
gery and  imitation,  the  age  of  Ossian  and 
Chatterton,  Horace  Walpole  and  Bishop 
Percy.  Lastly,  the  poets  enrolled  themselves 
in  the  new  school,  and  an  original  hterature, 
suggested  by  the  old,  was  created  by  Sir  Wal- 


8  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

ter  Scott,  Coleridge,  and  Keats.  It  was  the 
temper  of  the  antiquary  and  the  sceptic,  in 
the  age  of  Gibbon  and  Hume,  that  begot  the 
Romantic  Revival;  and  the  rebellion  of  the 
younger  age  against  the  spirit  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  was  the  rebellion  of  a  child 
against  its  parents. 

It  is  not  needful,  nor  indeed  is  it  possible,  to 
define  Romance.  In  the  mathematical  sciences 
definitions  are  all-important,  because  with 
them  the  definition  is  the  thing.  When  a 
mathematician  asks  you  to  describe  a  circle,  he 
asks  you  to  create  one.  But  the  man  who  asks 
you  to  describe  a  monkey  is  less  exacting;  he 
will  be  content  if  you  mention  some  of  the  fea- 
tures that  seem  to  you  to  distinguish  a  monkey 
from  other  animals.  Such  a  description  must 
needs  be  based  on  personal  impressions  and 
ideas;  some  features  must  be  chosen  as  being 
more  significant  than  the  rest.  In  the  history 
of  literature  there  are  only  two  really  signifi- 
cant things — men,  and  books.  To  study  the 
ascertained  facts  concerning  men  and  books  is 
to  study  biography  and  bibliography,  two 
sciences  which  between  them  supply  the  only 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  9 

competent  and  modest  part  of  the  history  of 
hterature.  To  discern  the  significance  of  men 
and  books,  to  classify  and  explain  them,  is  an- 
other matter.  We  have  not,  and  we  never  shall 
have,  a  calculus  sufficient  for  human  life  even 
at  its  weakest  and  poorest.  Let  him  who  con- 
ceives high  hopes  from  the  progress  of  knowl- 
edge and  the  pertinacity  of  thought  tame  and 
subdue  his  pride  by  considering,  for  a  moment, 
the  game  of  chess.  That  game  is  played  with 
thirty-two  pieces,  of  six  different  kinds,  on  a 
board  of  sixty- four  squares.  Each  kind  of 
piece  has  one  allotted  mode  of  action,  which  is 
further  cramped  by  severe  limitations  of 
space.  The  conditions  imposed  upon  the  game 
are  strict,  uniform,  and  mechanical.  Yet  those 
who  have  made  of  chess  a  life-long  study  are 
ready  to  confess  their  complete  ignorance  of  the 
fundamental  merits  of  particular  moves;  one 
game  does  not  resemble  another ;  and  from  the 
most  commonplace  of  developments  there  may 
spring  up,  on  the  sudden,  wild  romantic  possi- 
bilities and  situations  that  are  like  miracles.  If 
these  surprising  flowers  of  fancy  grow  on  the 
chess-board,  how  shall  we  set  a  limit  to  the 


10  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

possibilities  of  human  life,  which  is  chess,  with 
variety  and  uncertainty  many  million  times 
increased?  It  is  prudent,  therefore,  to  say  lit- 
tle of  the  laws  which  govern  the  course  of  hu- 
man history,  to  avoid,  except  for  pastime,  the 
discussion  of  tendencies  and  movements,  and  to 
speak  chiefly  of  men  and  books.  If  an  author 
can  be  exhibited  as  the  effect  of  certain  causes 
(and  I  do  not  deny  that  some  authors  can 
plausibly  be  so  exhibited)  he  loses  his  virtue  as 
an  author.  He  thought  of  himself  as  a  cause, 
a  surprising  intruder  upon  the  routine  of  the 
world,  an  original  creator.  I  think  that  he  is 
right,  and  that  the  profitable  study  of  a  man 
is  the  study  which  regards  him  as  an  oddity, 
not  a  quiddity. 

A  general  statement  of  the  law  that  gov- 
erns literary  history  may  perhaps  be  borrowed 
from  the  most  unreasonable  of  the  arts — the 
art  of  dress.  One  of  the  powerful  rulers  of 
men,  and  therefore  of  books,  is  Fashion,  and 
the  fluctuations  of  literary  fashion  make  up  a 
great  part  of  literary  history.  If  the  history 
of  a  single  fashion  in  dress  could  ever  be  writ- 
ten, it  would  illuminate  the  literary  problem. 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  11 

The  motives  at  work  are  the  same ;  thoughtful 
wearers  of  clothes,  like  thoughtful  authors,  are 
all  trying  to  do  something  new,  within  the 
limits  assigned  by  practical  utility  and  social 
sympathy.  Each  desires  to  express  himself 
and  yet  in  that  very  act  to  win  the  admiration 
and  liking  of  his  fellows.  The  great  object  is 
to  wear  the  weeds  of  humanity  with  a  differ- 
ence. Some  authors,  it  is  true,  like  timid  or  lazy 
dressers,  desire  only  to  conform  to  usage.  But 
these,  as  M.  Brunetiere  remarks  in  one  of  his 
historical  essays,  are  precisely  the  authors  who 
do  not  count.  An  author  who  respects  himself 
is  not  content  if  his  work  is  mistaken  for  an- 
other's, even  if  that  other  be  one  of  the  gods  of 
his  idolatry.  He  would  rather  write  his  own 
signature  across  faulty  work  than  sink  into  a 
copyist  of  merit.  This  eternal  temper  of  self- 
assertion,  this  spirit  of  invention,  this  deter- 
mination to  add  something  or  alter  something, 
is  no  doubt  the  principle  of  hfe.  It  questions 
accepted  standards,  and  makes  of  reaction 
from  the  reigning  fashion  a  permanent  force  in 
literature.  The  young  want  something  to  do ; 
they  will  not  be  loyal  subjects  in  a  kingdom 


12  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

where  no  land  remains  to  be  taken  up,  nor  will 
they  allow  the  praise  of  the  dead  to  be  the  last 
word  in  criticism.  Why  should  they  para- 
phrase old  verdicts? 

The  sway  of  Fashion  often  bears  hardest  on 
a  good  author  just  dead,  when  the  generation 
that  discovered  him  and  acclaimed  him  begins 
to  pass  away.  Then  it  is  not  what  he  did  that 
attracts  the  notice  of  the  younger  sort,  but  what 
he  left  undone.  Tennyson  is  discovered  to  be 
no  great  thinker.  Pope,  who,  when  his  star 
was  in  the  ascendant,  was  "Mr.  Pope,  the  new 
Poet,"  has  to  submit  to  examination  by  the 
Headmaster  of  Winchester,  who  decides  that 
he  is  not  a  poet,  except  in  an  inferior  sense. 
Shakespeare  is  dragged  to  the  bar  by  Thomas 
Rymer,  who  demonstrates,  with  what  degree 
of  critical  ability  is  still  disputed,  but  certainly 
in  clear  and  vigorous  English,  that  Shakes- 
peare has  no  capacity  for  tragic  writing. 
Dante  is  banished,  by  the  critics  of  the  Renais- 
sance, into  the  Gothic  darkness.  So  the  pendu- 
lum of  fashion  swings  to  and  fro,  compelled, 
even  in  the  shortest  of  its  variable  oscillations, 
to  revisit  the  greatest  writers,  who  are  nearest 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  13 

to  the  centre  of  rest.  Wit  and  sense,  which  are 
raised  by  one  age  into  the  very  essentials  of 
good  poetry,  are  denied  the  name  of  poetry  by 
the  next;  sentiment,  the  virtue  of  one  age,  is 
the  exploded  vice  of  another;  and  Romance 
comes  in  and  goes  out  with  secular  regularity. 
The  meaning  of  Romance  will  never  come 
home  to  him  who  seeks  for  it  in  modern  con- 
troversies. The  name  Romance  is  itself  a 
memorial  of  the  conquest  of  Europe  by  the 
Romans.  They  imposed  their  language  on 
half  Europe,  and  profoundly  influenced  the 
other  half.  The  dialectical,  provincial  Latin, 
of  various  kinds,  spoken  by  the  conquered  peo- 
ples, became  the  Romance  speech;  and  Ro- 
mance literature  was  the  new  literature  which 
grew  up  among  these  peoples  from  the  ninth 
centurv  onwards, — or  from  an  earlier  time,  if 
the  fringe  of  Celtic  peoples,  who  kept  their 
language  but  felt  the  full  influence  of  Chris- 
tianity, be  taken  into  the  account.  The  chief 
thing  to  be  noted  concerning  Romance  litera- 
ture is  that  it  was  a  Christian  literature,  find- 
ing its  background  and  inspiration  in  the  ideas 
to  which  the  Christian  Church  gave  currency. 


14  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

While  Rome  spread  her  conquests  over 
Europe,  at  the  very  heart  of  her  empire 
Christianity  took  root,  and  by  slow  process 
transformed  that  empire.  During  the  Middle 
Ages  the  Bishops  of  Rome  sat  in  the  seat  of  the 
Roman  Emperors.  This  startling  change 
possessed  Gibbon's  imagination,  and  is  the 
theme  of  his  great  work.  But  the  whole  of 
Gibbon's  history  was  anticipated  and  con- 
densed by  Hobbes  in  a  single  sentence — "If  a 
man  considers  the  original  of  this  great  eccles- 
iastical dominion,  he  will  easily  perceive  that 
the  Papacy  is  no  other  than  the  ghost  of  the 
deceased  Roman  Empire,  sitting  crowned 
upon  the  grave  thereof.  For  so  did  the  Papacy 
start  up  on  a  sudden  out  of  the  ruins  of  that 
heathen  power." 

Here,  then,  is  the  answer  to  a  question  which 
at  once  suggests  itself.  How  do  we  get  this 
famous  opposition  between  the  older  Latin  lit- 
erature and  the  literature  of  those  countries 
which  had  inherited  or  accepted  the  Latin  tra- 
dition? Why  did  not  the  Romans  hand  over 
their  literature  and  teach  it,  as  they  handed 
over  and  taught  their  law?    They  did  teach  it  in 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  15 

their  schools;  grammar  and  rhetoric,  two  of 
the  chief  subjects  of  a  Hberal  education,  were 
purely  literary  studies,  based  on  the  work  of  the 
literary  masters  of  Rome.  Never  was  there 
an  education  so  completely  literary  as  the  or- 
ganized education  of  Rome  and  of  her  prov- 
inces. How  came  it  that  there  was  any  breach 
between  the  old  and  the  new? 

A  question  of  this  kind,  involving  centuries 
of  history,  does  not  admit  of  a  perfectly  simple 
answer.  It  may  be  very  reasonably  maintained 
that  in  Rome  education  killed  literature.  A 
carefully  organized,  universal  system  of  educa- 
tion, which  takes  for  its  material  the  work  of 
great  poets  and  orators,  is  certain  to  breed  a 
whole  army  of  slaves.  The  teachers,  employed 
by  the  machine  to  expound  ideas  not  their  own, 
soon  erect  systems  of  pedantic  dogma,  under 
which  the  living  part  of  literature  is  buried. 
The  experience  of  ancient  Rome  is  being  re- 
peated in  the  England  of  today.  The  officials 
responsible  for  education,  whatever  they  may 
imeasily  pretend,  are  forced  by  the  necessities 
of  their  work  to  encourage  uniformity,  and 
national  education  becomes   a  warehouse   of 


16  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

second-hand  goods,  presided  over  by  men  who 
cheerfully  explain  the  mind  of  Burke  or  of 
Shakespeare,  adjusting  the  place  of  each,  and 
balancing  faults  against  merits.  But  Roman 
education  throughout  the  Empire  had  further 
difficulties  to  encounter.  To  understand  these 
it  must  be  remembered  what  Latin  literature 
was.  The  Latins,  when  we  first  discern  them 
in  the  dim  light  of  the  past,  were  a  small,  stren- 
uous, political  people,  with  a  passion  for  gov- 
ernment and  war.  They  first  subdued  Italy, 
and  no  very  serious  culture-problem  resulted 
from  that  conquest.  The  Etruscans  certainly 
contributed  much  to  Latin  civilization,  but 
their  separate  history  is  lost.  No  one  knows 
what  the  Etruscans  thought.  The  Romans  do 
not  seem  to  have  cared.  They  welded  Italy  to- 
gether, and  thereafter  came  into  contact  with 
the  older,  richer  civilizations  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean shores.  The  chief  of  these,  in  its  influ- 
ence, was  the  Greek  civilization,  as  it  had 
developed  in  that  famous  group  of  free  city 
states,  fostered  by  the  sun  and  air,  and  addicted 
to  life.  In  Athens,  at  the  time  of  her  glory, 
life  was  not  a  habit,  but  an  experiment.    Even 


THE    ORIGIN   OF    ROMANCE  IT 

the  conservative  Romans  were  infected.  They 
fell  under  the  sway  of  Greek  thought.  When 
a  practical  man  of  business  becomes  intimate 
with  an  artist,  he  is  never  the  same  man  again. 
The  thought  of  that  disinterested  mode  of  hfe 
haunts  his  dreams.  So  Rome,  though  she  had 
paid  little  regard  to  the  other  ancient  peoples 
with  whom  she  had  had  traffic  and  war,  put 
herself  to  school  to  the  Greeks.  She  accepted 
the  Greek  pantheon,  renamed  the  Greek  gods 
and  goddesses,  and  translated  and  adopted 
Greek  culture.  The  real  Roman  religion  was 
a  religion  of  the  homestead,  simple,  pious, 
domestic,  but  they  now  added  foreign  orna- 
ments. So  also  with  literature;  their  own 
native  literature  was  scanty  and  practical — 
laws  and  rustic  proverbs — but  they  set  them- 
selves to  produce  a  new  literature,  modelled  on 
the  Greek.  Virgil  followed  Homer;  Plautus 
copied  Menander;  and  Roman  literature  took 
on  that  secondary  and  reminiscent  character 
which  it  never  lost.  It  was  a  literature  of  cul- 
ture, not  of  creed.  This  people  had  so  practical 
a  genius  that  they  could  put  the  world  in  har- 
ness ;  for  the  decoration  of  the  world  they  were 
willing  to  depend  on  foreign  loans. 


18  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

In  SO  far  as  Latin  literature  was  founded  on 
the  Greek,  that  is,  in  so  far  as  it  was  a  deri- 
vative and  imitative  hterature,  it  was  not  very 
fit  for  missionary  purposes.  One  people  can 
give  to  another  only  what  is  its  own.  The 
Greek  gods  were  useless  for  export.  An  ex- 
ample may  be  taken  from  the  English  rule  in 
India.  We  can  give  to  the  peoples  of  India 
our  own  representative  institutions.  We  can 
give  them  our  own  authors,  Shakespeare, 
13urke,  Macaulay.  But  we  cannot  give  them 
Homer  and  Virgil,  who  nevertheless  continue 
to  play  an  appreciable  part  in  training  the 
English  mind;  and  we  can  hardly  give  them 
Milton,  whose  subtlest  beauties  depend  on  the 
niceties  of  the  Latin  speech.  The  trial  for 
Latin  literature  came  when  obscurely,  in  the 
purlieus  and  kennels  of  Rome,  like  a  hidden 
fermentation,  Christianity  arose.  The  earliest 
Christians  were  for  the  most  part  illiterate ;  but 
when  at  last  Christianity  reached  the  high 
places  of  the  government,  and  controlled  the 
Empire,  a  problem  of  enormous  difficulty  pre- 
sented itself  for  solution.  The  whole  elaborate 
educational  system  of  the  Romans  was  founded 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  IS 

on  the  older  literature  and  the  older  creeds. 
All  education,  law,  and  culture  were  pagan. 
How  could  the  Christians  be  educated;  and 
how,  unless  they  were  educated,  could  they 
appeal  to  the  minds  of  educated  men?  So 
began  a  long  struggle,  which  continued  for 
many  centuries,  and  swayed  this  way  and  that. 
Was  Christianity  to  be  founded  barely  on  the 
Gospel  precepts  and  on  a  way  of  life,  or  was 
it  to  seek  to  subdue  the  world  by  yielding  to 
it?  This,  the  religious  problem,  is  the  chief 
educational  problem  in  recorded  history.  There 
were  the  usual  parties ;  and  the  fiercest,  on  both 
sides,  counselled  no  surrender.  Tertullian, 
careful  for  the  purity  of  the  new  religion,  held 
it  an  unlawful  thing  for  Christians  to  become 
teachers  in  the  Roman  schools.  Later,  in  the 
reign  of  Julian  the  Apostate,  an  edict  forbade 
Christians  to  teach  in  the  schools,  but  this  time 
for  another  reason,  lest  they  should  draw  away 
the  youth  from  the  older  faith.  In  the  end  the 
result  was  a  practical  compromise,  arranged  by 
certain  ecclesiastical  politicians,  themselves  lov- 
ers of  letters,  between  the  old  world  and  the 
new.   It  was  agreed,  in  effect,  that  the  schools 


20  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

should  teach  humane  letters  and  mythology, 
leaving  it  to  the  Church  to  teach  divine  doctrine 
and  the  conduct  of  life.  All  later  history  bears 
the  marks  of  this  compromise.  Here  was  the  be- 
ginning of  that  distinction  and  apportionment 
between  the  secular  and  the  sacred  which  is  so 
much  more  conspicuous  in  Christian  communi- 
ties than  ever  it  has  been  among  the  followers 
of  other  religions.  Here  also  was  the  begin- 
ning of  that  strange  mixture,  familiar  to  all 
students  of  literature,  whereby  the  Bible  and 
Virgil  are  quoted  as  equal  authorities,  Plato 
is  set  over  against  St.  Paul,  the  Sibyl  confirms 
the  words  of  David,  and,  when  a  youth  of 
promise,  destined  for  the  Church,  is  drowned, 
St.  Peter  and  a  river-god  are  the  chief  mourn- 
ers at  his  poetic  obsequies.  This  mixture  is  not 
a  fantasy  of  the  Renaissance ;  it  has  been  part 
and  parcel,  from  the  earliest  times,  of  the  tra- 
dition of  the  Christian  church. 

History  is  larger  than  morality;  and  a  wise 
man  will  not  attempt  to  pass  judgment  on 
those  who  found  themselves  in  so  unparalleled 
a  position.  A  new  religion,  claiming  an  author- 
ity not  of  this  world,  prevailed  in  this  world, 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  21 

and  was  confronted  with  all  the  resources  of 
civilization,  inextricably  entangled  with  the  an- 
cient pagan  faiths.     What  was  to  be  done? 
The  Gospel  precepts  seemed  to  admit  of  no 
transaction.     "They  that  say  such  things  de- 
clare plainly  that  they  seek  a  country.     And 
truly,  if  they  had  been  mindful  of  that  coun- 
try from  whence  they  came  out,  they  might 
have  had  opportunity  to  have  returned.     But 
now  they  desire  a  better  country,  that  is  an 
heavenly."    The  material  prosperity  and  social 
order  which  Law  and  Politics  take  such  pains 
to  preserve  and  increase  are  no  part  of  their 
care.    They  are  strangers  and  pilgrims  in  the 
country  where  they  ^^itch  their  tent  for  a  night. 
How  dare  they  spend  time  on  cherishing  the 
painted  veil  called  Life,  when  their  desires  are 
fixed   on   what   it   conceals?     When   Tacitus 
called  the  Christian  rehgion  "a  deadly  super- 
stition," he  spoke  as  a  true  Roman,  a  member 
of  the  race  of  Empire-builders.     His  subtle 
political  instinct  scented  danger  from  those 
who  looked  with  coldness  on  the  business  and 
desire  of  this  world.    The  Christian  faith,  which 
presents  no  social  difficulties  while  it  is  pro- 


22  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

fessed  here  and  there  by  a  lonely  saint  or  seer, 
is  another  thing  when  it  becomes  the  formal 
creed  of  a  nation.  The  Christians  themselves 
knew  that  to  cut  themselves  off  from  the  coun- 
try of  their  birth  would  have  been  a  fatal 
choice,  so  far  as  this  world  is  concerned.  Their 
ultimate  decision  was  to  accept  Roman  civiliza- 
tion and  Roman  culture,  and  to  add  Christian- 
ity to  it. 

Then  followed  an  age-long  attempt  to  Chris- 
tianize Latin  literature,  to  supply  believers  with 
V  new  poetry,  written  in  polished  and  accom- 
plished verse,  and  inspired  by  Christian  doc- 
trine. Of  those  who  attempted  this  task, 
Prudentius  is  perhaps  the  greatest  name.  The 
attempt  could  never  have  been  very  successful ; 
those  who  write  in  Latin  verse  must  submit  to 
be  judged,  not  by  the  truth  of  their  teaching, 
but  by  the  formal  beauties  of  their  prosody,  and 
the  wealth  of  their  allusive  learning.  Even 
Milton,  zealot  though  he  be,  is  esteemed  for 
his  manner  rather  than  for  his  matter.  But  the 
experiment  was  cut  short  by  the  barbarian  in- 
vasions. When  the  Empire  was  invaded,  St. 
Jerome  and  St.  Augustine,   Prudentius  and 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  23 

Symmachiis,  Claudian  and  Paulinus  of  Nola, 
were  all  alive.  These  men,  in  varying  degrees, 
had  compounded  and  blended  the  two  elements, 
the  pagan  and  the  Christian.  The  two  have 
been  compounded  ever  since.  The  famous 
sevententh  century  controversy  concerning 
the  fitness  of  sacred  subjects  for  poetic  treat- 
ment is  but  a  repetition  and  an  echo  of  that 
older  and  more  vital  difference.  The  two 
strains  could  never  be  perfectly  reconciled,  so 
that  a  certain  impurity  and  confusion  was  be- 
queathed to  modern  European  literature,  not 
least  to  English  literature.  Ours  is  a  great  and 
various  literature,  but  its  rarest  virtue  is  sim- 
plicity. Our  best  ballads  and  lyrics  are  filled 
with  the  matter  of  faith,  but  as  often  as  we 
try  the  larger  kinds  of  poetry,  we  inevitably 
pass  over  into  reminiscence,  learning,  criticism, 
— in  a  word,  culture. 

The  barbarians  seized,  or  were  granted,  land ; 
and  settled  down  under  their  chiefs.  They 
accepted  Christianity,  and  made  it  into  a  war- 
like rehgion.  They  learned  and  "corrupted" 
the  Latin  language.  In  their  dialects  they  had 
access  neither  to  the  literature  of  ancient  Rome, 


24  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

nor  to  the  imitative  scholarly  Christian  litera- 
ture, poetry  and  homily,  which  competed  with 
it.  Latin  continued  to  be  the  language  of  reli- 
gion and  law.  It  was  full  of  terms  and  allu- 
sions which  meant  nothing  to  them.  They 
knew  something  of  government, — not  of  the 
old  republic,  but  of  their  own  men  and  estates. 
They  believed  wholly  and  simply  in  Christian- 
ity, especially  the  miraculous  part  of  it.  To 
them  (as  to  all  whom  it  has  most  profoundly 
influenced)  it  was  not  a  philosophy,  but  a  his- 
tory of  marvellous  events.  When,  by  the  oper- 
ation of  society,  their  dialect  had  formed  itself, 
a  new  literature,  unlike  anything  that  had 
flourished  in  ancient  Rome,  grew  up  among 
them.  This  was  Romance,  the  great  literary 
form  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  was  a  sincere  lit- 
erature, expressive  of  their  pride  in  arms  and 
their  simple  religious  faith.  The  early  songs 
and  ballads,  chanted  in  the  Romance  speech, 
have  all  perished.  From  a  later  time  there  have 
come  down  to  us  the  Chansons  de  Geste,  narra- 
tive poems  composed  by  the  professional  caste 
of  poets  to  celebrate  the  deeds  and  adventures 
of  the  knights  who  fought  the  battles  of  Charle- 
magne against  the  Saracen  invader. 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  25 

The  note  of  this  Romance  literature  is  that 
it  was  actual,  modern,  realistic,  at  a  time  when 
classical  literature  had  become  a  remote  con- 
vention of  bookish  culture.  It  was  simg  in  the 
banqueting-hall,  while  Latin  poetry  was  read 
in  the  cells  of  monks.  It  flourished  enor- 
mously, and  extended  itself  to  all  the  matter  of 
history  and  legend,  to  King  Arthur,  Theseus, 
Alexander,  ancient  heroes  and  warriors  who 
were  brought  alive  again  in  the  likeness  of 
knights  and  emperors.  Its  triumph  was  so 
complete,  that  its  decadence  followed  swiftly. 
Like  the  creatures  that  live  in  the  blood  of  man, 
literary  forms  and  species  commonly  die  of 
their  own  excess.  Romances  were  multiplied, 
and  imitated;  professional  poets,  not  content 
with  marvels  that  had  now  become  familiar, 
sought  for  a  new  sensation  in  extravagant  lan- 
guage and  incident.  The  tales  became  more 
and  more  sophisticated,  elaborate,  grotesque, 
and  unreal,  until,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  a 
stout  townsman,  who  ticketed  bales  in  a  cus- 
tom-house, and  was  the  best  English  poet  of  his 
time,  found  them  ridiculous.  In  Sir  Thopas 
Chaucer  parodies  the  popular  literature  of  his 


26  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

day.  Sir  Thopas  is  a  great  reader  of  romances ; 
he  models  himself  on  the  heroes  whose  deeds 
jDossess  his  imagination,  and  scours  the  English 
coimtrj^side,  seeking  in  vain  for  the  fulfilment 
of  his  dreams  of  prowess. 

So  Romance  declined;  and  by  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century  the  fashion  is  completely 
reversed ;  the  pendulum  has  swimg  back ;  now  it 
is  the  literature  inspired  by  the  old  classical 
models  that  is  real,  and  handles  actual  human 
interests,  while  Romantic  literature  has  become 
remote,  fictitious,  artificial.  This  does  not 
mean  that  the  men  of  the  later  seventeenth 
century  believed  in  the  gods  and  Achilles,  but 
not  in  the  saints  and  Arthur.  It  means  that 
classical  literature  was  found  best  to  imitate 
for  its  form.  The  greater  classical  writers  had 
described  the  life  of  man,  as  they  saw  it,  in 
direct  and  simple  language,  carefully  ordered 
by  art.  After  a  long  apprenticeship  of  trans- 
lation and  imitation,  modern  writers  adopted 
the  old  forms,  and  filled  them  with  modern 
matter.  The  old  mythology,  when  it  was  kept, 
was  used  allegorically  and  allusively.  Com- 
mon-sense,   pointedly    expressed,    with    some 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  2T 

traditional  ornament  and  fable,  became  the 
matter  of  poetry. 

A  rough  summary  of  this  kind  is  enough  to 
show  how  large  a  question  is  involved  in  the 
history  of  Romance.  All  literary  history  is  a 
long  record  of  the  struggle  between  those  two 
rival  teachers  of  man — books,  and  the  exper- 
ience of  life.  Good  books  describe  the  world, 
and  teach  whole  generations  to  interpret  the 
world.  Because  they  throw  light  on  the  life  of 
man,  they  enjoy  a  vast  esteem,  and  are  set  up 
in  a  position  of  authority.  Then  they  generate 
other  books;  and  literature,  receding  further 
and  further  from  the  source  of  truth,  becomes 
bookish  and  conventional,  mitil  those  who  have 
been  taught  to  see  nature  through  the  spec- 
tacles of  books  grow  imeasy,  and  throw  away 
the  distorting  glasses,  to  look  at  nature  afresh 
with  the  naked  eye.  They  also  write  books,  it 
may  be,  and  attract  a  crowd  of  imitators,  who 
produce  a  literature  no  less  servile  than  the 
literature  it  supplants. 

This  movement  of  the  sincere  and  indepen- 
dent human  mind  is  found  in  the  great  writers 
of  all  periods,  and  is  called  the  Return  to  Na- 


28  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

ture.  It  is  seen  in  Pope  no  less  than  in  Words- 
worth; in  The  Rape  of  the  Lock  no  less  than 
in  Peter  Bell.  Indeed  the  whole  history  of  the 
mock-heroic,  and  the  work  of  Tassoni,  Boi- 
leau,  and  Pope,  the  three  chief  masters  in  that 
kind,  was  a  reassertion  of  sincerity  and  nature 
against  the  stilted  conventions  of  the  late  liter- 
ary epic.  The  Iliad  is  the  story  of  a  quarrel. 
AVhat  do  men  really  quarrel  about?  Is  there 
any  more  distinctive  mark  of  human  quarrels 
than  the  eternal  triviality  of  the  immediate 
cause?  The  insulting  removal  of  a  memorial 
emblem  from  an  Italian  city;  the  shifting  of 
a  reading-desk  from  one  position  to  another  in 
a  French  church ;  the  playful  theft  of  a  lock  of 
hair  by  an  amorous  young  English  nobleman 
— these  were  enough,  in  point  of  fact,  to  set 
whole  communities  by  the  ears,  and  these  are 
the  events  celebrated  in  The  Rape  of  the 
Bucket,  The  Rape  of  the  Lectern,  The  Rape  of 
the  Lock.  How  foolish  it  is  to  suppose  that 
nature  and  truth  are  to  be  found  in  one  school 
of  poetry  to  the  exclusion  of  another!  The 
eternal  virtues  of  literature  are  sincerity,  clar- 
ity, breadth,  force,  and  subtlety.    They  are  to 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  39 

be  found,  in  diverse  combinations,  now  bere 
and  now  there.  While  the  late  Latin  Christian 
poets  were  bound  over  to  Latin  models — to 
elegant  reminiscences  of  a  faded  mythology 
and  the  tricks  of  a  professional  rhetoric — there 
arose  a  new  school,  intent  on  making  literature 
real  and  modern.  These  were  the  Romance 
poets.  If  they  pictured  Theseus  as  a  duke,  and 
Jason  as  a  wandering  knight,  it  was  because 
they  thought  of  them  as  live  men,  and  took 
means  to  make  them  live  for  the  reader  or 
listener.  The  realism  of  the  early  literature  of 
the  Middle  Ages  is  perhaps  best  seen  in  old 
Irish.  The  monk  bewails  the  lawlessness  of  his 
wandering  thoughts,  which  run  after  dreams  of 
beauty  and  pleasure  during  the  hour  of  divine 
service.  The  hermit  in  the  wood  describes,  with 
loving  minuteness,  the  contents  of  his  larder. 
Never  was  there  a  fresher  or  more  spontaneous 
poetry  than  the  poetry  of  this  early  Christian 
people.  But  it  is  not  in  the  direct  line  of  de- 
scent, for  it  was  written  in  the  Celtic  speech  of 
a  people  who  did  not  achieve  the  government  of 
Europe.  The  French  romances  inherited  the 
throne,  and  passed  through  all  the  stages  of 


30  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

elaboration  and  decadence.  They  too,  in  their 
turn,  became  a  professional  rhetoric,  false  and 
tedious.  When  they  ceased  to  be  a  true  pic- 
ture of  life,  they  continued  in  esteem  as  a  school 
of  manners  and  deportment  for  the  fantastic 
gallantrj^  of  a  court.  Yet  through  them  all 
their  Christian  origin  shines.  Their  very 
themes  bear  witness  to  the  teaching  of  Chris- 
tian asceticism  and  Christian  idealism.  The 
quest  of  a  lady  never  seen ;  the  temptations  that 
present  themselves  to  a  wandering  knight 
under  the  disguise  of  beauty  and  ease ; — these, 
and  many  other  familiar  romantic  plots  bor- 
row their  inspiration  from  the  same  source. 
Not  a  few  of  the  old  fairy  stories,  preserved  in 
folk-lore,  are  full  of  religious  meaning — they 
are  the  Christian  literature  of  the  Dark  Ages. 
Nor  is  it  hard  to  discern  the  Christian  origins 
of  later  Romantic  poetry.  Pope's  morality  has 
little  enough  of  the  religious  character : 

Know  then  this  truth  (enough  for  Man  to  know). 
Virtue  alone  is  Happiness  below. 

But  Coleridge,  when  he  moralizes,  speaks  the 
language  of  Christianity: 


THE    ORIGIN   OF    ROMANCE  31 

He  prayeth  best,  who  loveth  best 
All  things  both  great  and  small; 

For  the  dear  God  who  loveth  us 
He  made  and  loveth  all. 

The  like  contrast  holds  between  Dryden 
and  Shelley.  It  is  perhaps  hardly  fair  to  take 
an  example  from  Dryden's  poems  on  religion; 
they  are  rational  arguments  on  difficult  topics, 
after  this  fashion : 

In  doubtful  questions  'tis  the  safest  way 
To  learn  what  unsuspected  ancients  say; 
For  'tis  not  likely  we  should  higher  soar 
In  search  of  heaven  than  all  the  church  before. 

When  Dryden  writes  in  his  most  fervent  and 
magnificent  style,  he  writes  like  this : 

I  will  not  rake  the  Dunghill  of  thy  Crimes, 

For  who  would  read  thy  Life  that  reads  thy  rhymes  ? 

But  of  King  David's  Foes  be  this  the  Doom, 

May  all  be  like  the  Young-man  Absalom; 

And  for  my  Foes  may  this  their  Blessing  be, 

To  talk  like  Doeg  and  to  write  like  Thee. 

Nor  is  it  fair  to  bring  Shelley's  lame  satires 
into  comparison  with  these  splendors.  When 
Shelley  is  inspired  by  his  demon,  this  is  how  he 
writes : 


33  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

To   suffer  woes   which  Hope   thinks   infinite; 
To  forgive  wrongs  darker  than  death  or  night ; 

To  defy  Power  which  seems  omnipotent; 
To  love,  and  bear;  to  hope  till  Hope  creates 
From  its  own  wreck  the  thing  it  contemplates ; 

Neither  to  change,  nor  falter,  nor  repent; 
This,  like  thy  glory.  Titan,  is  to  be 
Good,  great  and  joyous,  beautiful  and  free; 
This  is  alone  Life,  Joy,  Empire  and  Victory. 

Some  of  the  great  poets  of  the  Romantic 
Revival  took  mediaeval  literature  for  their 
model,  but  they  did  more  than  that.  They  re- 
turned to  the  cult  of  wild  nature;  they  rein- 
troduced the  supernatural,  which  is  a  part  of 
the  nature  of  man;  they  described  seas,  and 
deserts,  and  mountains,  and  the  emotions  of  the 
soul  in  loneliness.  But  so  soon  as  it  passed  out 
of  the  hands  of  the  greater  poets,  this  revived 
Romance  became  as  bookish  as  decadent  Clas- 
sicism, and  ran  into  every  kind  of  sentimental 
extravagance.  Indeed  revived  Romance  also 
became  a  school  of  manners,  and  by  making  a 
fashion  and  a  code  of  rare  emotions,  debased 
the  descriptive  parts  of  the  language.  A  de- 
scription by  any  professional  reporter  of  any 
Royal  wedding  is  further  from  the  truth  to-day 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  33 

than  it  was  in  the  eighteenth  century.  The 
average  writer  is  looser  and  more  unprincipled. 
The  word  Romance  supplies  no  very  valu- 
able instrument  of  criticism  even  in  regard  to 
the  great  writers  of  the  early  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Wordsworth,  like  Defoe,  drew  straight 
from  the  life.  Those  who  will  may  call  him  a 
Romantic.  He  told  of  adventures — the  ad- 
ventures of  the  mind.  He  did  not  write  of 
Bacchus,  Venus,  and  Apollo;  neither  did  he 
concern  himself  with  Merlin,  Tristram,  and  the 
Lady  of  the  Lake.  He  shunned  what  is  de- 
rived from  other  books.  His  theme  is  man, 
nature,  and  human  life.  Scott,  in  rich  and  care- 
less fashion,  dealt  in  every  kind  of  material  that 
came  his  way.  He  described  his  own  country 
and  his  own  people  with  loving  care,  and  he 
loved  also  the  melodrama  of  historical  fiction 
and  supernatural  legend.  "His  romance  and 
antiquarianism,"  says  Ruskin,  "his  knighthood 
and  monkery,  are  all  false,  and  he  knows  them 
to  be  false."  Certainly,  Tlie  Heart  of  Midlo- 
thian and  The  Antiquary  are  better  than 
Ivanhoe.  Scott's  love  for  the  knighthood  and 
monkery  was  real,  but  it  was  playful;  His 
heart  was  with  Fielding. 


34  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

There  is  nothing  inconsistent  in  the  best  of 
the  traditions  of  the  two  parties.  The  Classical 
school  taught  simplicity,  directness,  and  mod- 
esty of  speech.  They  are  right :  it  is  the  way  to 
tell  a  ghost  story.  The  Romantic  school  taught 
a  wider  imaginative  outlook  and  a  more  curious 
analysis  of  the  human  mind.  They  also  are 
;  right:  it  is  the  way  to  investigate  a  case  in  the 
police  courts.  Both  were  cumbered,  at  times, 
with  the  dead  things  that  they  found  in  the 
l)ooks  they  loved.  All  literature,  except  the 
strongest  and  purest,  is  cumbered  with  useless 
matter — the  conventional  epithet,  the  grandi- 
ose phrase,  the  out-worn  classical  quotation, 
the  self-conscious  apology,  the  time-honored 
joke.  But  there  are  only  two  schools  of  lit- 
erature— the  good,  and  the  bad.  As  for  na- 
tional legend,  its  growth  is  the  same  in  all  ages. 
The  Greeks  told  tales  of  Achilles,  the  Romans 
of  Aeneas,  the  French  of  Charlemagne,  the 
British  of  Arthur.  It  is  a  part  af  the 
same  process,  and  an  expression  of  the  same 
humanity. 

I  have  tried  to  show  that  the  Renaissance 
bears  the  same  relation  to  classical  literature  as 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  35 

the  Revival  of  Romance  bears  to  mediaeval 
literature,  and  that  the  whole  history  of  the 
literature  of  Europe  is  an  oscillation  between 
Christian  and  Pagan  ideals  during  that  long 
and  wavering  process  whereby  Christianity  was 
partially  established  as  the  creed  and  way  of 
life  of  a  group  of  diverse  nations.  The  his- 
torical meaning  of  the  word  Romance  is  exact 
and  easy  to  define.  But  in  common  usage  the 
word  means  something  much  vaguer  than  this. 
It  is  a  note,  an  atmosphere,  a  kind  of  feeling 
that  is  awakened  not  only  by  literature  but  by 
the  behavior  of  men  and  the  disposition  of 
material  objects.  John  Evelyn,  the  diarist, 
enjoys  the  reputation  of  having  been  the  first 
to  speak  of  a  "romantic  site," — a  phrase  which 
leads  the  way  to  immeasurable  possibilities  in 
the  application  of  the  word.  Accuracy  in  the 
definition  of  this  larger  meaning  is  unattain- 
able ;  and  would  certainly  be  false,  for  the  word 
has  taken  its  meaning  from  centuries  of  usage 
by  inaccurate  thinkers.  A  whole  cluster  of 
feelings,  impressions,  and  desires,  dimly  recog- 
nized as  cognate,  has  grown  around  the  word, 
which  has  now  been  a  centre  of  critical  discus- 


36  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

sion  and  controversy  for  tlie  better  part  of  a 
century.  Heine,  in  his  dissertation  on  the  Ro- 
mantic School,  takes  the  Christianity  of  the 
Middle  Ages  as  his  starting-point,  and  relates 
everything  to  that.  Perhajjs  he  makes  too 
much  of  allegory  and  symbolism,  which  have 
always  been  dear  to  the  church,  but  are  not 
conspicuous  in  early  Romance.  Yet  no  one  can 
go  far  astray  who  keeps  in  touch,  as  Heine 
does,  with  the  facts  of  history.  Goethe,  impa- 
tient of  the  wistful  intensities  of  youth,  said 
that  the  Classical  is  health,  and  the  Romantic 
disease.  Much  has  been  made,  by  many  critics, 
of  the  statue  and  the  picture,  as  types  of  an- 
cient and  modern  art,  the  one  complete  in  itself, 
the  other  suggesting  more  than  it  portrays. 
Mr.  Walter  Pater,  borrowing  a  hint  from  a 
sentence  of  Bacon,  finds  the  essence  of  Ro- 
mance in  the  addition  of  strangeness  to  beauty, 
of  curiosity  to  desire.  It  would  be  easy  to  mul- 
tiply these  epigrammatic  statements,  which  are 
all  not  obscurely  related  to  the  fundamental 
changes  wrought  on  the  world  by  Christian 
ideas.  No  single  formula  can  hope  to  describe 
and  distinguish  two  eras,  or  define  two  tempers 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  37 

of  mind.  If  I  had  to  choose  a  single  character- 
istic of  Romance  as  the  most  noteworthy,  I 
think  I  should  choose  Distance,  and  should  call 
Romance  the  magic  of  Distance.  What  is  the 
most  romantic  line  in  Virgil?  Surely  it  is  the 
line  which  describes  the  ghosts,  staying  for 
waftage  on  the  banks  of  the  river,  and  stretch- 
ing out  their  hands  in  passionate  desire  to  the 
further  shore : 

Tendebantque  manus  ripae  ulterioris  amore. 

Scott  expounds  the  harmonizing  power  of 
distance  in  his  Journal,  where  he  describes  the 
funeral  of  his  friend  Laidlaw's  infant: 

I  saw  the  poor  child's  funeral  from  a  distance.  Ah, 
that  Distance!  What  a  magician  for  conjuring  up 
scenes  of  joy  or  sorrow,  smoothing  all  asperities, 
reconciling  all  incongruities,  veiling  all  absurdness, 
softening  every  coarseness,  doubling  every  effect  by 
the  influence  of  the  imagination.  A  Scottish  wedding 
should  be  seen  at  a  distance;  the  gay  band  of  the 
dancers  just  distinguished  amid  the  elderly  group  of 
the  spectators, — the  glass  held  high,  and  the  distant 
cheers  as  it  is  swallowed,  should  be  only  a  sketch, 
not  a  finished  Dutch  picture,  when  it  becomes  brutal 
and  boorish.  Scotch  psalmody,  too,  should  be  heard 
from  a  distance.  The  grunt  and  the  snuffle,  and  the 
whine  and  the  scream,  should  be  all  blended  in  that 


38  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

deep  and  distant  sound,  which  rising  and  falling  like 
the  Eolian  harp,  may  have  some  title  to  be  called 
the  praise  of  our  Maker.  Even  so  the  distant  funeral : 
the  few  mourners  on  horseback  with  their  plaids 
wrapped  around  them — the  father  heading  the  pro- 
cession as  they  enter  the  river,  and  pointing  out  the 
ford  by  which  his  darling  is  to  be  carried  on  the  last 
long  road — not  one  of  the  subordinate  figures  in  dis- 
cord with  the  general  tone  of  the  incident — seeming 
just  accessories,  and  no  more — this  is  affecting. 

The   same   idea   is   the    subject   of    T.    E. 
Brown's  poem,  The  Schooner: 

Just  mark  that  schooner  westward  far  at  sea — 

'Tis  but  an  hour  ago 
When  she  was  lying  hoggish  at  the  quay, 

And  men  ran  to  and  fro, 
And  tugged,  and  stamped,  and  shoved,  and  pushed 

and  swore, 
And  ever  and  anon,  with  crapulous  glee, 
Grinned  homage  to  viragoes  on  the  shore. 

•  ••••• 

And  now,  behold !  a  shadow  of  repose 

Upon  a  line  of  gray. 
She  sleeps,  that  transverse  cuts  the  evening  rose — 

She  sleeps,  and  dreams  away, 
Soft  blended  in  a  unity  of  rest 

All  jars,  and  strifes  obscene,  and  turbulent  throes, 
'Neath  the  broad  benediction  of  the  West. 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  39 

Shelley  finds  the  suggestion  of  distance  in 
beautiful  music: 

Though  the  sound  overpowers, 
Sing  again,  with  thy  sweet  voice  revealing 
A  tone 
Of  some  world  far  from  ours. 
Where  music  and  moonlight  and  feeling 
Are  one. 

Wordsworth  hears  it  in  the  song  of  the 
Highland  Girl: 

Will  no  one  tell  me  what  she  sings  ? — 
Perhaps  the  plaintive  numbers  flow 
For  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things, 
And  battles  long  ago. 

These  quotations  are  enough  to  show  what 
a  width  of  view  is  given  to  modern  Romantic 
poetry.  Man  is,  in  one  sense,  more  truly  seen 
in  a  wide  setting  of  the  mountains  and  the  sea 
than  close  at  hand  in  the  street.  But  the  ro- 
mantic effect  of  distance  may  delude  and  con- 
ceal as  well  as  glorify  and  liberate.  The 
weakness  of  the  modern  Romantic  poet  is  that 
he  must  keep  himself  aloof  from  life,  that  he 
may  see  it.  He  rejects  the  authority,  and 
many  of  the  pleasures,  along  with  the  duties,  of 
society.    He  looks  out  from  his  window  on  the 


40  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

men  fighting  in  the  plain,  and  sees  them  trans- 
figured under  tlie  rays  of  the  setting  sun.  He 
enjoys  the  battle,  but  not  as  the  fighters  enjoy 
it.  He  nurses  himself  in  all  the  luxury  of 
philosophic  sensation.  He  does  not  help  to 
bury  the  child,  or  to  navigate  the  schooner,  or 
to  discover  the  Fortunate  Islands.  The  busi- 
ness of  every  poet,  it  may  be  said,  is  vision,  not 
action.  But  the  epic  poet  holds  his  reader  fast 
by  strong  moral  bonds  of  sympathy  with  the 
actors  in  the  poem.  "I  should  have  liked  to  do 
that"  is  what  the  reader  says  to  himself.  He 
is  asked  to  think  and  feel  as  a  man,  not  as 
a  god. 

The  weakness  of  revived  Romance  found  the 
most  searching  of  its  critics  in  Tennyson,  who 
was  fascinated,  when  he  was  shaping  his  own 
poetic  career,  by  the  picture  and  the  past,  yet 
could  not  feel  satisfied  with  the  purely  aesthetic 
attitude  of  art  to  life.  In  poem  after  poem  he 
returns  to  the  question.  Is  poetry  an  escape 
from  life?  Must  it  lull  the  soul  in  a  selfish  se- 
curity ?  The  struggle  that  went  on  in  his  mind 
has  left  its  mark  on  The  Lady  of  Shalott,  The 
Palace  of  Art,  The  Voyage,  The  Vision  of 


THE   ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE  41 

Sin,  The  Lotos-Eaters,,  and  others  of  his 
poems.  The  Lady  of  Shalott  hves  secluded  in 
her  bower,  where  she  weaves  a  magic  web  with 
gay  colors.  She  has  heard  that  a  curse  will  fall 
on  her  if  she  looks  out  on  the  world  and  down 
to  the  city  of  Camelot.  She  sees  the  outer 
world  only  in  a  mirror,  and 

In  her  web  she  still  delights 
To  weave  the  mirror's  magic  sights 

— villages,  market-girls,  knights  riding  two  and 
two,  funerals,  or  pairs  of  lovers  wandering  by. 
At  last  she  grows  half-sick  of  seeing  the  world 
only  in  shadows  and  reflections.  Then  a  sud- 
den vivid  experience  breaks  up  this  life  of 
dream.  Sir  Lancelot  rides  past,  in  shining  ar- 
mor, singing  as  he  rides.  She  leaves  her  magic 
web  and  mirror,  and  looks  upon  the  real 
world. 

Out  flew  the  web  and  floated  wide; 
The  mirror  craek'd  from  side  to  side ; 
"The  curse  is  come  upon  me,"  cried 
The  Lady  of  Shalott. 

She  goes  into  the  world,  and  there  she  meets 
her  death.  The  poem  is  not  an  allegory,  but 
there  is  no  mistaking  the  thought  that  gener- 


42  THE    ORIGIN    OF    ROMANCE 

ated  it.  The  mirror  and  the  web  are  the  em- 
blems of  Romantic  art.  The  feehngs  which  stir 
the  heart  to  action,  which  spring  to  meet  the 
occasion  or  the  object,  are  contrasted,  in  the 
poem,  with  the  more  pensive  feehngs  which  are 
excited  by  the  sight  of  the  object  in  a  mirror, 
and  the  suggestions  of  color  and  design  which 
are  to  be  transferred  to  the  embroidery.  The 
mirror  is  a  true  and  subtle  symbol.  When 
Shakespeare  treated  the  same  problem,  he 
made  King  Richard  II,  the  most  romantic- 
all)^  minded  of  all  his  kings,  call  for  a  mir- 
ror. The  thing  that  it  is  easiest  for  a  man  to 
see  in  a  mirror  is  himself;  egotism  in  its  many 
forms,  self-pity,  self-cultivation,  self-esteem, 
dogs  Romanticism  like  its  shadow.  The  desire 
to  be  the  spectator  of  your  own  life,  to  see  your- 
self in  all  kinds  of  heroic  and  pathetic  atti- 
tudes, is  the  motive-power  of  Romantic  poetry 
in  many  of  its  later  developments.  Yet  life 
must  be  arrested  and  falsified  before  the  desire 
can  be  fulfilled.  No  one  has  ever  seen  himself 
in  a  mirror  as  he  is  seen  by  others.  He  cannot 
catch  himself  looking  away,  self-forgetful,  in- 
tent on  something  outward;  yet  only  when  he 


THE   ORIGIN   OF    ROMANCE  43 

is  in  these  attitudes  does  his  true  character 
show  itself  in  his  face.  Nor,  if  he  could  so  see 
himself,  would  he  be  a  witness  of  the  truth. 
The  sensation  of  drowning,  or  of  leading  an 
assault  in  war,  is  very  unlike  the  sentiment 
which  is  aroused  in  the  spectator  of  either  of 
these  adventures.  Romanticism,  in  its  decline, 
confuses  the  sentiment  with  the  sensation,  and 
covets  the  enjoyment  of  life  on  the  easy  terms 
of  a  by-stander. 

These  faults  and  failings  of  late  Romance 
are  far  enough  removed  from  the  simple  hero- 
ism of  the  death  of  Roland  in  the  pass  of 
Roncesvalles.  Later  Romance  is  known  every- 
where by  its  derivative,  secondary,  consciously 
literary  character.  Yet  it  draws  sometimes 
from  the  original  source  of  inspiration,  and 
attains,  by  devious  ways,  to  poetic  glories  not 
inferior  to  the  old. 


IMITATION  AND  FORGERY 

Romance  is  a  perennial  form  of  modern 
literature,  and  has  passed  through  many 
phases.  No  period  has  been  without  it,  though 
the  esteem  in  which  it  is  held  has  varied  a  good 
deal  from  age  to  age.  English  literature  is 
strong  in  romance;  there  is  something  in  the 
English  temper  which  makes  scepticism  un- 
grateful to  it,  and  disposes  it  to  treat  even 
dreams  seriously.  Chaucer,  who  laughed  at 
the  romantic  writers  of  his  day,  yet  gave  a 
new  lease  of  life  to  Romance  in  Troilus  and 
Cressida  and  The  Knightes  Tale.  Many  of  the 
poets  of  the  seventeenth  century  chose  roman- 
tic themes  for  their  most  serious  work;  if 
Davenant  and  Chamberlayne  and  others  had 
been  as  successful  as  they  were  ambitious,  they 
would  have  anticipated  the  Revival  of  Ro- 
mance. Even  in  the  age  of  Pope,  the  old 
romance  subjects  were  still  popular,  though 

44 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  45 

they  were  celebrated  in  books  which  have  long 
been  forgotten.  Everyone  who  has  studied  the 
Troy  legend  of  the  Middle  Ages  Imows  how 
great  a  share  in  the  popularization  of  the 
legend  belongs  to  the  Sicilian  lawyer,  Guido 
delle  Colonne,  who  summarized,  in  the  dull 
style  of  a  Latin  chronicle,  and  without  ac- 
knowledgment, the  brilliant  Roman  de  Troie 
which  the  French  poet,  Benoit  de  Sainte-More 
had  written  for  Queen  Eleanor  of  England. 
Guido's  matter-of-fact  compilation  had  an 
enormous  vogue;  Chaucer,  Lydgate,  and 
Shakespeare  treated  it  as  an  authority;  and 
Caxton  translated  it  into  English  prose. 
Through  all  the  changes  of  fashion  Caxton's 
version  continued  in  esteem;  it  was  repeatedly 
revised  and  reissued;  and,  in  the  very  age  of 
Pope,  found  what  was  doubtless  a  large  pub- 
lic under  the  title  The  Destruction  of  Troy,  In 
Three  Books  .  .  .  With  many  Admirable 
Acts  of  Chivalry  and  Martial  Prowess,  effected 
by  Valiant  Knights,  in  the  Defence  and  Love 
of  distressed  Ladies.  The  Thirteenth  Edition, 
Corrected  and  much  Amended.  London, 
Printed  for  Eben.  Tracey,  at  the  Three  Bibles 


46  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

on  London-Biidge.  1708.  In  the  underworld 
of  literature  Romance  never  died  out.  The  Re- 
vival of  Romance  took  its  special  character 
from  a  gradual  and  powerful  reaction  against 
Dryden  and  Pope  and  all  those  masters  of 
Classical  method  who,  during  half  a  century, 
had  legislated  for  English  poetry.  It  began 
very  early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  long  be- 
fore the  death  of  Pope.  No  sooner  did  a  dy- 
nasty of  moralists  and  satirists  claim  possession 
of  the  high  places,  and  speak  in  the  name  of 
English  literature,  than  all  the  other  interests 
and  kinds,  which  survived  among  the  people, 
began  to  range  themselves  in  opposition,  and 
to  assert  their  right  to  be  heard.  The  suprem- 
acy of  Dryden  and  Pope  was  the  most  despotic 
rule  that  English  poetry  has  ever  known,  and 
the  revolt  was  strong  in  proportion.  Satire 
and  morality  very  easily  becomes  tedious,  espe- 
cially when  they  are  in  close  alliance.  Despot- 
ism may  be  tempered  by  epigrams,  and  so  be- 
come tolerable,  but  it  is  important  that  the 
epigrams  should  not  be  made  by  the  despot. 
Outside  the  charmed  circle  of  his  friendships. 
Pope  was  ready  enough  to  use  his  wit  against 
any  pretender. 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  47 

The  change  began  gradually,  and  in  very  in- 
nocent fashion.  Poetry  had  been  taught  to  be 
scholarly,  self-conscious,  experimental;  and  it 
showed  its  skill  in  half-playful  imitations  of  the 
older  English  masters.  Pope  himself  imitated 
Chaucer  and  Spenser  in  burlesque  fashion. 
John  Philips,  in  The  Splendid  Shilling,  used 
Milton's  heightened  style  to  describe  the  dis- 
tresses of  an  impecunious  poet.  William  Shen- 
stone  in  The  School-mistress,  parodied  Spen- 
ser, yet  the  parody  is  in  no  way  hostile,  and 
betrays  an  almost  sentimental  admiration. 
Spenser,  like  Milton,  never  lost  credit  as  a 
master,  though  his  fame  was  obscured  a  little 
during  the  reign  of  Dryden.  His  style,  it 
must  be  remembered,  was  archaic  in  his  own 
time;  it  could  not  grow  old,  for  it  had  never 
been  young.  Addison,  in  An  Account  of  the 
Greatest  E7iglish  Poets,  says  that  Spenser's 
verse 

Can  charm  an  understanding  age  no  more ; 
The  long-spun  allegories  fulsome  grow. 
While  the  dull  moral  lies  too  plain  below. 

But  the  Account  is  a  merely  juvenile  work; 
its  dogma  is  not  the  sword  of  judgment,  but 


48  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

the  shield  of  ignorance.  "The  character  he 
gives  of  Spenser,"  said  Pope,  "is  false;  and  I 
have  heard  him  say  that  he  never  read  Spenser 
till  fifteen  years  after  he  wrote  it."  As  for 
Pope  himself,  among  the  English  poets  Wal- 
ler, Spenser,  and  Dryden  were  his  childhood's 
favorites,  in  that  order;  and  the  year  before 
his  death  he  said  to  Spence — "I  don't  know 
how  it  is;  there  is  something  in  Spenser  that 
pleases  one  as  strongly  in  one's  old  age  as  it 
did  in  one's  youth.  I  read  the  Faerie  Queene, 
when  I  was  about  twelve,  with  infinite  delight ; 
and  I  think  it  gave  me  as  much  when  I  read  it 
over,  about  a  year  or  two  ago." 

The  lyrical  Milton  and  the  romantic  Spen- 
ser found  disciples  among  poets  in  the  early 
half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Two  of  these 
disciples  may  be  mentioned,  both  born  about 
the  year  1700,  only  twelve  years  later  than 
Pope.  John  Dyer,  the  son  of  a  solicitor  in 
Wales,  was  bred  to  the  law,  but  gave  it  up  to 
study  painting  under  Jonathan  Richardson. 
His  earlier  and  better  poems  were  written 
while  he  wandered  about  South  Wales  in 
pursuit  of  his  art.     Grongar  Hill,  the  most 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  49 

notable  of  them,  was  published  in  1726.  Love 
of  the  country  is  what  inspires  his  verses, 
which  have  a  very  winning  simplicity,  only 
touched  here  and  there  by  the  conventions 
deemed  proper  for  poetry: 

Grass  and  flowers  Quiet  treads, 
On  the  meads  and  mountain-heads, 
Along  with  Pleasure,  close  ally'd. 
Ever  by  each  other's  side; 
And  often,  by  the  murmuring  rill, 
Hears  the  thrush,  while  all  is  still, 
Within  the  groves  of  Grongar  Hill. 

The  truth  of  his  observation  endeared  him  to 
Wordsworth;  and  his  moral,  when  he  finds  a 
moral,  is  without  violence : 

How  close  and  small  the  hedges  lie ! 
What  streaks  of  meadows  cross  the  eye! 
A  step  methinks  may  pass  the  stream. 
So  little  distant  dangers  seem ; 
So  we  mistake  the  Future's  face, 
Ey'd  thro'  Hope's  deluding  glass ; 
As  yon  summits  soft  and  fair, 
Clad  in  colours  of  the  air, 
Which,  to  those  who  journey  near. 
Barren,  and  brown,  and  rough  appear, 
Still  we  tread  tir'd  the  same  coarse  way. 
The  present's  still  a  cloudy  day. 


50  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

It  takes  a  good  poet  to  strike  a  clear  note, 
with  no  indecision,  in  the  opening  hnes  of  his 
poem,  as  Dyer  does  in  The  Country  Walk: 

I  am  resolv'd,  this  charming  day, 
In  the  open  fields  to  stray ; 
And  have  no  roof  above  my  head 
But  that  whereon  the  Gods  do  tread. 

His  landscapes  are  delicately  etched,  and  are 
loved  for  their  own  sake : 

And  there  behold  a  bloomy  mead, 
A  silver  stream,  a  willow  shade, 
Beneath  the  shade  a  fisher  stand. 
Who,  with  the  angle  in  his  hand, 
Swings  the  nibbling  fry  to  land. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  speak  solemnly  of 
Dyer's  debt  to  Milton;  he  is  an  original  poet; 
but  the  writer  of  the  lines  quoted  above  can 
never  have  been  blind  to  the  beauties  of 
U Allegro  and  II  Penseroso.  His  two  arts 
brought  him  little  material  prosperity;  in  1740 
he  took  orders  in  the  Church  of  England,  and 
in  his  later  years  did  harm  to  his  fame  by  a 
long  industrial  poem  called  The  Fleece,  which 
has  on  it  none  of  the  dew  that  glistens  on  his 
youthful  verses. 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  SI 

James  Thomson,  who  won  a  great  reputa- 
tion in  his  own  age,  was  the  son  of  a  parish 
minister  in  Scotland.  He  was  educated  in 
Edinburgh,  and  came  to  London  to  seek  his 
fortune.  All  Thomson's  work  shows  the  new 
tendencies  in  poetry  struggling  with  the  ac- 
cepted fashions.  His  language  in  The  Sea- 
sons is  habitually  rhetorical  and  stilted,  yet 
there  is  hardly  a  page  without  its  vignettes  of 
truth  and  beauty.  When  he  forgets  what  he 
has  learned  in  the  Rhetoric  class,  and  falls  back 
on  his  own  memories  and  likings,  the  poet  in 
him  reappears.  In  The  Castle  of  Indolence, 
published  just  before  his  death  in  1748,  he  imi- 
tates Spenser.  One  stanza  of  this  poem  is 
more  famous  than  all  the  rest;  it  is  pure  and 
high  romance: 

As  when  a  shepherd  of  the  Hebrid-Isles, 
Placed  far  amid  the  melancholy  main, 
(Whether  it  be  lone  fancy  him  beguiles. 
Or  that  aerial  beings  sometimes  deign 
To  stand  embodied  to  our  senses  plain). 
Sees  on  the  naked  hill,  or  valley  low. 
The  whilst  in  ocean  Phoebus  dips  his  wain, 
A  vast  assembly  moving  to  and  fro ; 
Then  all  at  once  in  air  dissolves  the  wondrous  show. 


59  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

Many  wlio  are  familiar  with  this  simile  have 
never  been  at  the  pains  to  remember,  or  en- 
quire, what  it  illustrates.  Indeed  its  appear- 
ance in  the  poem  is  almost  startling,  as  if  it 
were  there  for  no  purpose  but  to  prophesy  of 
the  coming  glories  of  English  poetry.  The 
visitors  to  the  Castle  of  Indolence  are  met  at 
the  gate  by  the  porter,  who  supplies  them 
with  di-essing-gowns  and  slippers,  wherein  to 
take  their  ease.  They  then  stroll  off  to  various 
parts  of  the  spacious  grounds,  and  their  dis- 
appearance is  the  occasion  for  this  wonderful 
verse.  Thomson  cared  no  more  than  his  read- 
ers for  the  application  of  the  figure ;  what  pos- 
sessed him  was  his  memory  of  the  maffic  twi- 
light  on  the  west  coast  of  Scotland. 

Pope  and  Prior  were  metropolitan  poets ;  it 
is  worth  noting  that  Dyer  belonged  to  Wales, 
and  Thomson  to  Scotland.  It  is  even  more  sig- 
nificant that  Dyer  was  by  profession  a  painter, 
and  that  Thomson's  poems  were  influenced  by 
memories  of  the  fashionable  school  of  land- 
scape painting.  The  development  of  Romantic 
poetry  in  the  eighteenth  century  is  inseparably 
associated  with  pictorial  art,  and  especially  with 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  53 

the  rise  of  landscape  painting.  Two  great  mas- 
ters of  the  seventeenth  century,  Salvator  Rosa 
and  Claude  Lorrain,  are  more  important  than 
all  the  rest.  We  have  here  to  do  not  with  the  ab- 
solute merits  of  painting,  nor  with  its  technical 
beauties  and  subtleties,  but  with  its  effect  on 
the  popular  imagination,  which  in  this  matter 
does  not  much  differ  from  the  poetic  imagina- 
tion. The  landscapes  of  Salvator  Rosa  and 
Claude  were  made  familiar  to  an  enormous 
public  by  the  process  of  engraving,  and  poetry 
followed  where  painting  led.  There  are  ex- 
quisite landscapes  in  the  backgrounds  of  the 
great  Italian  masters;  Leonardo,  Titian,  and 
others;  but  now  the  background  became  the 
picture,  and  the  groups  of  figures  were  reduced 
to  serve  as  incidents  in  a  wider  scheme.  Ex- 
actly the  same  change,  the  same  shift  of  the 
centre  of  interest,  may  be  seen  in  Thomson's 
poetry  compared  with  Spenser's.  No  doubt 
it  would  be  difficult  to  balance  the  creditor  and 
debtor  account  as  between  poetry  and  paint- 
ing; the  earlier  pictorial  landscapes  borrowed 
some  hints  from  the  older  romances;  but  in 
England,  at  least,  landscapes  of  wild  rocks, 


54  IMITATION   AND   FORGERY 

and  calm  lakes,  and  feudal  castles  lit  up  by 
the  glow  of  the  setting  sun  were  familiar  before 
the  reaction  in  poetry  set  in.  Romance,  in  its 
modern  development,  is  largely  a  question  of 
background.  A  romantic  love-affair  might  be 
defined  as  a  love-affair  in  other  than  domestic 
surroundings.  Who  can  use  the  word  "ro- 
mantic" with  more  authority  than  Coleridge? 
In  Kubla  Khan,  a  poem  which  some  would 
choose  as  the  high-water  mark  of  English  ro- 
mantic poetry,  he  gets  his  effect  from  the 
description  of  a  landscape  combining  the  ex- 
tremes of  beauty  and  terror: 

But   oh!   that   deep    romantic   chasm   which   slanted 

Down  the  green  hill  athwart  a  cedarn  cover ! 

A  savage  place !  as  holy  and  enchanted 

As  e'er  beneath  a  waning  moon  was  haunted 

By  woman  wailing  for  her  demon  lover ! 

And  from  this  chasm,  with  ceaseless  turmoil  seething, 

•  •  •  •  •  • 

It  flung  up  momently  the  sacred  river. 
Five  miles  meandering  with  a  mazy  motion 
Through  wood  and  dale  the  sacred  river  ran, 
Then  reached  the  caverns  measureless  to  man, 
And  sank  in  tumult  to  a  lifeless  ocean ; 
And  'mid  this  tumult  Kubla  heard  from  far 
Ancestral  voices  prophesying  war! 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  55 

Romance  demands  scenery ;  and  it  should  never 
be  forgotten  that  the  age  of  Pope,  the  age 
of  symmetry  and  correctness  in  poetry,  was 
an  age  when  the  taste  for  wild  scenery  in 
painting  and  in  gardening  was  at  its  height 
If  the  house  was  set  in  order,  the  garden 
broke  into  a  wilderness.  Addison  in  the  Spec- 
tator (No.  414)  praises  the  new  art  of  land- 
scape gardening: 

There  is  generally  in  nature  something  more  grand 
and  august,  than  what  we  meet  with  in  the  curiosities 
of  art.  When,  therefore,  we  see  this  imitated  in  any 
measure,  it  gives  us  a  nobler  and  more  exalted  kind 
of  pleasure,  than  what  we  receive  from  the  nicer  and 
more  accurate  productions  of  art.  On  this  account 
our  English  gardens  are  not  so  entertaining  to  the 
fancy  as  those  in  France  and  Italy,  where  we  see 
a  larger  extent  of  ground  covered  over  with  an 
agreeable  mixture  of  garden  and  forest,  which  rep- 
resent everywhere  an  artificial  wildness,  much  more 
charming  than  that  neatness  and  elegancy  which  we 
meet  wuth  in  those  of  our  own  country. 

Addison  would  have  hesitated  to  apply  this 
doctrine  to  poetry;  indeed  the  oa'thodoxy  of 
that  age  favored  the  highest  possible  contrast 
between  the  orderly  works  of  man,  and  the  gar- 


56  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

den,  which  it  chose  to  treat  as  the  outpost  of 
rebelhoiis  nature.  Pope  was  a  gardener  as 
well  as  a  poet,  and  his  gardening  was  extrava- 
gantly romantic.  He  describes  his  ideal  gar- 
den in  the  Epistle  to  the  Earl  of  Burlington: 

Let  not  each  beauty  everywhere  be  spy'd, 

Where  half  the  skill  is  decently  to  hide. 

He  gains   all  points,  who  pleasingly  confounds, 

Surprises,  varies,  and  conceals  the  bounds. 

Consult  the  genius  of  the  place  in  all ; 

That  tells  the  waters  or  to  rise,  or  fall; 

Or  helps  th'  ambitious  hill  the  heav'ns  to  scale. 

Or  scoops  in  circling  theatres  the  vale; 

Calls  in  the  country,  catches  opening  glades, 

Joins  willing  woods,  and  varies  shades  from  shades ; 

Now  breaks,  or  now  directs,  th'  intending  lines ; 

Paints  as  you  plant,  and,  as  you  work,  designs. 

Pope  carried  out  these  ideas  as  well  as  he  could 
in  his  garden  at  Twickenham,  where  he  at- 
tempted to  compress  every  variety  of  scenic 
effect  within  the  space  of  five  acres,  so  that  it 
became  a  kind  of  melodramatic  peep-show. 
The  professional  landscape-gardeners  worked 
on  a  larger  scale ;  the  two  chief  of  them  perhaps 
were  Bridgeman,  who  invented  the  haha  for 
the  purpose  of  concealing  the  bounds ;  and  Wil- 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  57 

liam  Kent,  Pope's  associate  and  contemporary, 
who  disarranged  old  gardens,  and  designed 
illustrations  for  Spenser's  Faetie  Queene. 
Kent  was  an  architect  and  bad  painter,  much 
favored  by  George  I.  Lord  Chesterfield  com- 
pares him  to  Apelles,  who  alone  was  permitted 
to  paint  the  portrait  of  Alexander: 

Equal  your  varied  wonders !  save 

This   difference  we  see, 
One  would  no  other  painter  have — 

No  other  would  have  thee. 

From  1716  onward  he  was  much  employed 
by  the  Earl  of  Burlington.  He  helped  to  lay 
out  Stowe,  in  Buckinghamshire,  with  a  fresh 
and  surprising  view  at  every  turn ;  the  wander- 
ing visitor  was  introduced,  among  other  de- 
lights, to  the  Hermitage,  the  Temple  of  Venus, 
the  Egyptian  pyramid,  St.  Augustine's  cave 
(artfully  constructed  of  roots  and  moss),  tlie 
Saxon  Temple,  the  Temple  of  Bacchus,  and 
Dido's  cave.  The  craze  for  romantic  garden- 
ing, with  its  illusions  of  distance,  and  its  ruins 
and  groves,  persisted  throughout  the  eighteenth 
century.  Shenstone's  garden  at  The  Leasowes 
enjoyed   a   higher   reputation   even   than   his 


58  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

poetry,  and  it  is  well  known  how  he  strained 
his  slender  means  in  the  effort  to  outshine  his 
neighbors.  "In  time,"  says  Johnson,  "his  ex- 
penses brought  clamours  about  him  that  over- 
powered the  lamb's  bleat  and  the  linnet's  song; 
and  his  groves  were  haunted  by  beings  very 
different  from  fauns  and  fairies." 

The  chief  of  Kent's  successors  was  Launce- 
lot  Brown,  commonly  called  "Capability 
Brown"  from  his  habit  of  murmuring  to  him- 
self, as  he  gazed  on  a  tract  of  land  submitted 
for  his  diagnosis — ^"It  has  capabilities;  it  has 
capabilities."  He  laid  out  Kew  and  Blen- 
heim. Gazing  one  day  on  one  of  his  own  made 
rivers,  he  exclaimed,  with  an  artist's  rapture, — 
"Thames!  Thames!  Thou  wilt  never  forgive 
me."  He  certainly  imposed  himself  upon  his 
own  time,  and,  so  far,  was  a  great  man.  "Mr. 
Brown,"  said  Richard  Owen  Cambridge,  "I 
veiy  earnestly  wish  that  I  may  die  before  you." 
"Why  so?"  said  Brown  with  some  surprise. 
"Because,"  said  he,  "I  should  like  to  see 
Heaven  before  you  had  improved  it."  Among 
the  romantic  writers  who  were  bitten  by  the 
mania  for  picturesque  improvement  were  Hor- 


IMITATION  AND  FORGERY  59 

ace  Walpole  and  even  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
Everyone  knows  how  Walpole  bought  from 
Mrs.  Chevenix,  the  toy-shop  woman,  a  little 
house  called  "Chopp'd  Straw  Hall"  which  he 
converted  into  the  baronial  splendors  of  Straw-  * 

berry  Hill;  and  how  Scott  transmuted  a  mean  >/ 

Tweedside  farm,  called  Clarty  Hole,  into  the 
less  pretentious  glories  of  Abbotsford. 

After  the  practice  came  the  theory.  The 
painters  and  landscape-gardeners  were  fol- 
lowed by  a  school  of  philosophers,  who  ex- 
pounded Taste  and  the  laws  of  the  Picturesque. 
Some  extracts  from  the  work  of  one  of  these, 
Thomas  Whately,  whose  Observations  on 
Modern  Gardening  appeared  in  1770,  will 
show  to  what  excesses  the  whole  nonsensical 
business  had  been  carried.  "In  wild  and  roman- 
tic scenes,"  says  Whately,  "may  be  introduced 
a  ruined  stone  bridge,  of  which  some  arches 
may  be  still  standing,  and  the  loss  of  those 
which  are  fallen  may  be  supplied  by  a  few 
planks,  with  a  rail,  thrown  over  the  vacancy. 
It  is  a  picturesque  object:  it  suits  the  situation; 
and  the  antiquity  of  the  passage,  the  care  taken 
to  keep  it  still  open,  though  the  original  build- 


60  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

ing  is  decayed,  the  apparent  necessity  which 
thence  results  for  a  communication,  give  it  an 
imposing  air  of  reahty.'  The  context  of  this 
passages  shows  that  the  bridge  leads  nowhither. 
On  the  management  of  rocks  Whately  is  a  con- 
noisseur. "Their  most  distinguished  charac- 
ters," he  says,  "are  dignity,  terror,  and  fancy: 
the  expressions  of  all  are  constantly  wild;  and 
sometimes  a  rocky  scene  is  only  wild,  without 
pretensions  to  any  particular  character."  But 
ruins  are  what  he  likes  best,  and  he  recom- 
mends that  they  shall  be  constructed  on  the 
model  of  Tintern  Abbey.  They  must  be  ob- 
vious ruins,  much  dilapidated,  or  the  visitors 
will  examine  them  too  closely.  "An  appen- 
dage evidently  more  modern  than  the  principal 
structure  will  sometimes  corroborate  the  effect ; 
the  shed  of  a  cottager  amidst  the  remains  of  a 
temple,  is  a  contrast  both  to  the  former  and  the 
present  state  of  the  building."  It  seems  almost 
impossible  that  this  should  have  been  offered 
as  serious  advice ;  but  it  was  the  admired  usage 
of  the  time.  Whately's  book  was  a  recognized 
authority,  and  ran  through  several  editions. 
He  is  also  known  as  a  Shakespeare  critic,  of  no 
particular  mark. 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  61 

A  more  influential  writer  than  Whately  was 
William  Gilpin,  an  industrious  clergyman  and 
schoolmaster,  who  spent  his  holidays  wander- 
ing and  sketching  in  the  most  approved  parts 
of  England,  Wales  and  Scotland.  His  books 
on  the  Picturesque  were  long  held  in  esteem. 
The  earliest  of  them  was  entitled  Observations 
on  the  River  Wye  arid  several  parts  of  South 
Wales  ....  relative  chiefly  to  picturesque 
beauty  (1782).  Others,  which  followed  in 
steady  succession,  rendered  a  like  service  to  the 
Lake  district,  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  the 
New  Forest,  and  the  Isle  of  Wight.  Those 
books  taught  the  aesthetic  appreciation  of  wild 
nature  to  a  whole  generation.  It  is  a  testimony 
to  their  influence  that  for  a  time  they  enslaved 
the  youth  of  Wordsworth.  In  The  Prelude  he 
tells  how,  in  early  life,  he  misunderstood  the 
teaching  of  Nature,  not  from  jnsensibility;,  but 
from  the  presumption  which  applied  to  the  im- 
passioned life  of  Nature  the  "rules  of  mimic 
art."  He  calls  this  habit  "a  strong  infection 
of  the  age,"  and  tells  how  he  too,  for  a  time, 
was  wont  to  compare  scene  with  scene,  and  to 
pamper   himself   "with   meagre   novelties   of 


62  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

colour  and  proportion."  In  another  passage 
he  speaks  of  similar  melodi-amatic  errors,  from 
conformity  to  book-notions,  in  his  early  study 
of  poetry. 

The  dignities  of  plain  occurrence  then 

Were  tasteless,  and  truth's  golden  mean,  a  point, 

Where  no  sufficient  pleasure  could  be  found. 

But  imaginative  power,  and  the  humility 
which  had  been  his  in  childhood,  returned  to 
him — 

I  shook  the  habit  off 
Entirely  and  for  ever. 

Yet  in  one  curious  respect  Gilpin's  amateur 
teaching  did  leave  its  mark  on  the  history  of 
English  poetry.  When  Wordsworth  and  Col- 
eridge chose  the  Wye  and  Tintern  Abbey  for 
their  walking  tour,  they  were  probably  deter- 
mined in  that  direction  by  the  fame  of  the 
scenery;  and  when  they  and  Southey  settled  in 
the  Lake  district,  it  may  be  surmised  that  they 
felt  other  and  stronger  attractions  than  those 
that  came  from  Wordsworth's  early  associa- 
tions with  the  place.  The  Wye,  Tintern  Ab- 
bey, the  English  Lakes,  the  Scottish  High- 
lands— these  were  the  favored  places  of  the 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  63 

apostles  of  the  picturesque,  and  have  now  be- 
come memorial  places  in  our  poetic  history. 

All  these  gardeners  and  aesthetic  critics  who 
busied  themselves  with  wild  nature  were  aiming 
at  an  ideal  which  had  been  expressed  in  many 
painted  landscapes,  and  had  been  held  up  as 
the  top  of  admiration  by  one  of  the  greatest 
English  poets.  The  influence  of  Milton  on  the 
new  landscape  interest  must  be  held  to  be  not 
less  than  the  influence  of  his  contemporaries, 
Salvator  Rosa  and  Claude.  His  descriptions  of 
Paradise  did  more  than  any  painting  to  alter 
the  whole  practice  of  gardening.  They  are 
often  appealed  to,  even  by  the  technical  gar- 
deners. In  garden-lore  Milton  was  a  convinced 
Romantic.  He  has  two  descriptions  of  the 
Garden  of  Eden;  the  slighter  of  the  two  occurs 
on  the  occasion  of  Raphael's  entry,  and  merely 
resumes  the  earlier  and  fuller  account: 

Their  glittering  tents  they  passed,  and  now  is  come 
Into   the  blissful   field,   through  Groves   of  Myrrhe, 
And  flowering  Odours,  Cassia,  Nard,  and  Balme ; 
A  Wilderness  of  Sweets ;  for  Nature  here 
Wantoned  as  in  her  prime  and  plaid  at  will 
Her  Virgin  Fancies,  pouring  forth  more  sweet, 
Wilde  above  rule  or  art ;  enormous  bliss. 


64  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

Coleridge  has  some  remarks,  in  his  Table 
Talk,  on  Milton's  disregard  of  painting.  There 
are  only  two  pictures,  he  says,  in  Milton ;  Adam 
bending  over  the  sleeping  Eve,  and  the  en- 
trance of  Dalilah,  like  a  ship  under  full  sail. 
Certainly  the  above  lines  are  no  picture;  but 
they  are  more  exciting  than  any  clear  delinea- 
tion could  be;  they  are  full  of  scent,  and  air, 
and  the  emotions  of  ease  and  bliss.  The  other 
passage  has  more  of  architectural  quality  in  it, 
and  describes  what  first  met  Satan's  gaze,  when 
he  entered  the  Garden  and  sat,  perched  like  a 
cormorant,  upon  the  Tree  of  Life. 

The  crisped  Brooks 
With  mazie  error  under  pendant  shades 
Ran  Nectar,  visiting  each  plant,  and  fed 
Flours  worthy  of  Paradise  which  not  nice  Art 
In  Beds  and  curious  Knots,  but  Nature  boon 
Poured  forth  profuse  on  Hill  and  Dale  and  Plaine 
Both  where  the  morning  sun  first  warmly  smote 
The  open  field,  and  where  the  unpierc't  shade 
Imbround  the  noontide  Bowers :   Thus  was  this  place, 
A  happy  rural  seat  of  various  view: 
Groves  whose  rich  Trees  wept  odorous  Gumms  and 

Balme, 
Others  whose  fruit  burnisht  with  Golden  Rinde 
Hung  amiable,  Hesperian  Fables  true. 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  65 

If  true,  here  onely,  and  of  delicious  taste : 
Betwixt  the  Lawns,  or  level  Downs,  and  Flocks 
Grasing  the  tender  herb,  were  interpos'd. 
Or  palmie  hilloc,  or  the  flourie  lap 
Of  some  irriguous  Valley  spread  her  store, 
Flours  of  all  hue,  and  without  Thorn  the  Rose: 
Another  side,  umbrageous  Grots  and  Caves 
Of  coole  recess,  o'er  which  the  mantling  Vine 
Layes  forth  her  purple  Grape,  and  gently  creeps 
Luxuriant;  mean  while  murmuring  waters  fall 
Down  the  slope  hills,  disperst,  or  in  a  Lake, 
That  to  the  fringed  Bank  with  Myrtle  crown'd, 
Her  chrystall  mirror  holds,  unite  their  streams. 
The  Birds  their  quire  apply ;  aires,  vernal  aires, 
Breathing  the  smell  of  field  and  grove,  attune 
The  trembling  leaves,  while  LTniversal  Pan 
Knit  with  the  Graces  and  the  Hours  in  dance 
Led  on  th'  Eternal  Spring. 

Here  is  all  the  variety  of  hill  and  valley, 
wood  and  lawn,  rock  and  meadow,  waterfall 
and  lake,  rose  and  vine,  which  the  landscape 
artists  also  loved  to  depict,  and  which,  together 
with  ruined  temples  and  castles,  unknown  in 
Paradise,  became  the  cherished  ideal  of  land- 
scape gardening.  By  the  influence  of  Paradise 
Lost  upon  the  gardeners,  no  less  than  by  the 
influence  of  U Allegro  and  II  Penseroso  upon 
the  poets,  Milton  may  claim  to  be  regarded  as 


66  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

one  of  the  forefathers  of  the  Romantic  Revival. 
There  is  no  need  to  distinguish  carefully  be- 
tween poetry  and  painting  in  discussing  their 
contributions  to  Romance.  A  great  outcry  was 
raised,  in  the  last  age,  against  literary  criticism 
of  pictures.  But  in  this  question  we  are  con- 
cerned with  this  effect  of  pictures  on  the  nor- 
mal imagination,  which  is  literary,  which  cares 
for  story,  and  suggested  action,  and  the  whole 
chain  of  memories  and  desires  that  a  picture 
may  set  in  motion.  Do  not  most  of  those  who 
look  at  a  romantic  landscape  imagine  them- 
selves wandering  among  the  scenes  that  are 
portrayed?  And  are  not  men  prone  to  admire 
in  Nature  what  they  have  been  taught  by  Art 
to  notice?  The  landscape  art  of  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  taught  them  to 
imagine  themselves  in  lonely  scenes,  among  old 
ruins  or  frowning  rocks,  by  the  light  of  sunrise 
or  sunset,  cast  on  gleaming  lakes.  These  were 
the  theatre  of  Romance;  and  the  emotions 
awakened  by  scenes  like  these  played  an  enor- 
mous part  in  the  Revival.  It  was  thus  that 
poets  were  educated  to  find  that  exaltation 
in  the  terrors  of  mountainous  regions  which 


IMITATION   AND    FORGERY  67 

Gray  expressed  when  he  said:  "Not  a  preci- 
pice, not  a  torrent,  not  a  cHff,  but  is  pregnant 
with  rehgion  and  poetry." 

The  weaker  side  of  modern  Romance,  the 
play-acting  and  pretence  that  has  always  ac- 
companied it,  may  be  seen  in  the  gardening 
mania.  It  was  not  enough  to  be  a  country  gen- 
tleman; the  position  must  be  improved  by  the 
added  elegances  of  a  hermit's  cell  and  an 
Egyptian  pyramid.  It  is  like  children's  play; 
the  day  is  long,  the  affairs  of  our  elders  are 
tedious,  we  are  tired  of  a  life  in  which  there  is 
no  danger  and  no  hunger;  let  us  pretend  that 
we  are  monks,  or  ancient  Romans.  The  mature 
imagination  interprets  the  facts;  this  kind  of 
imagination  escapes  from  the  facts  into  a  world 
of  make-believe,  where  the  tyranny  and  cause 
and  effect  is  no  longer  felt.  It  is  not  a  hard 
word  to  call  it  childish ;  the  imagination  of  these 
early  Romantics  had  a  child's  weakness  and  a 
child's  delightful  confidence  and  zest. 

The  same  play  activity  expressed  itself  in  lit- 
erature, where  an  orgy  of  imitation  ushered  in 
the  real  movement.  The  antiquarian  begin- 
nings of  Romantic  poetry  may  be  well  illus- 


68  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

trated  by  the  life  and  works  of  Thomas  War- 
ton.  He  passed  his  Hfe  as  a  resident  Fellow 
of  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  and  devoted  his 
leisure,  which  was  considerable,  to  the  study  of 
English  poetry  and  Gothic  architecture.  He 
was  not  yet  thirty  when,  in  1757,  he  was  elected 
Professor  of  Poetry,  a  post  which  he  held  for 
ten  years.  During  this  time  he  planned  a  com- 
plete History  of  English  Poetry,  a  task  which 
Pope  and  Gray  in  turn  had  contemplated  and 
abandoned.  The  historical  interest  which  is  so 
conspicuous  in  early  Romanticism  owed  not  a 
little,  it  may  be  remarked  in  passing,  to  the 
initiative  of  Pope,  who  must  therefore  be  given 
a  place  in  any  full  genealogy  of  the  Romantic 
family.  Warton's  History,  so  far  as  it  was 
completed,  was  published  between  1774  and 
1781,  when  he  relaxed  his  efforts,  and  took  up 
lesser  tasks.  In  1785  he  was  made  Poet  Lau- 
reate on  the  strength  of  his  early  poems  and 
later  scholarship.    He  died  in  1790. 

Warton's  poems  are  a  curious  study.  Spen- 
ser and  Milton  are  his  masters,  and  he  is  a  docile 
pupil.  His  poetry  is  all  derivative,  and  might 
be  best  described  as  imitation  poetry.   Christo- 


IMITATION   AND    FORGERY  69 

pher  North  said  of  him  that  "the  gods  had 
made  him  poetical,  but  not  a  poet,"  a  saying 
which  contains  the  whole  truth.  He  puts  to- 
gether a  mosaic  of  phrases  borrowed  from  his 
teachers,  and  frames  them  in  a  sentimental 
setting  of  his  own.  Here  are  some  passages 
from  The  Pleasures  of  Melancholy,  which, 
though  he  wrote  it  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  does 
not  differ  in  method  or  inspiration  from  the 
rest  of  his  poetical  work : 

Beneath  yon  ruin'd  abbey's  moss-grown  piles 

Oft  let  me  sit,  at  twilight  hour  of  eve, 

Where  thro'  some  western  window  the  pale  moon 

Pours  her  long-levell'd  rule  of  streaming  light; 

While  sullen  sacred  silence  reigns  around, 

Save  the  lone  screech-owl's  note,  who  builds  his  bow'r 

Amid  the  mould'ring  caverns  dark  and  damp, 

Or  the  calm  breeze,  that  rustles  in  the  leaves 

Of  flaunting  ivy,  that  with  mantle  green 

Invests  some  wasted  tow'r.   .   .   . 

Then,  when  the  sullen  shades  of  ev'ning  close. 

Where    thro'    the   room   a   blindly-glimm'ring   gleam 

The  dying  embers  scatter,  far  remote 

From  Mirth's   mad   shouts,   that   thro'   th'   illumin'd 

roof 
Resound  with  festive  echo,  let  me  sit, 
Blest  with  the  lowly  cricket's  drowsy  dirge.   .   .   . 
O  come  then,  Melancholy,  queen  of  thought ! 


70  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

O  come  with  saintly  look,  and  steadfast  step, 
From  forth  thy  cave  embower'd  with  mournful  yew, 
Where  ever  to  the  curfeu's  solemn  sound 
List'ning  thou  sitt'st,  and  with  thy  cypress  bind 
Thy  votary's  hair,  and  seal  him  for  thy  son. 

Melancholy  seems  not  to  have  answered  these 
advances.  In  later  life  Warton  was  a  short, 
squat,  red-faced  man,  fond  of  ale,  and  a  cheer- 
ful talker,  with  a  thick  utterance,  so  that  he 
gobbled  like  a  turkey-cock.  Some  of  his  verses 
are  cheerful.  This  is  from  the  Ode  on  the  Ap- 
proach of  Summer: 

Haste  thee,  Nymph !  and  hand  in  hand 

With  thee  lead  a  buxom  band; 

Bring  fantastic-footed  Joy, 

With  Sport,  that  yellow-tressed  boy: 

Leisure,  that  through  the  balmy  sky 

Chases  a  crimson  butterfly. 

Bring  Health,  that  loves  in  early  dawn 

To  meet  the  milk-maid  on  the  lawn ; 

Bring  Pleasure,  rural  nymph,  and  Peace, 

Meek,  cottage-loving  shepherdess ! 

It  is  all  like  this,  fluent  and  unnecessary.  Per- 
haps no  verses  in  English  were  ever  made  so 
exactly  in  the  approved  fashion  of  modern 
Latin  verses.     Warton  writes  pleasantly,  his 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  71 

cento  of  reminiscences  is  skilful,  and  his  own 
epithets  are  sometimes  happy,  yet  nothing 
comes  of  it.  His  work  suggests  the  doubt 
whether  any  modern  Latin  verse,  even  the  best, 
would  deceive  an  intelligent  citizen  of  ancient 
Rome. 

The  strange  thing  about  the  Romantic  Re- 
vival is  that  an  epidemic  of  this  sort  of  imita- 
tion at  last  produced  real  poetry  and  real  ro- 
mance. The  industrious  simulation  of  the 
emotions  begot  the  emotions  simulated.  Is 
there  not  a  story  told  of  a  young  officer  who, 
having  dressed  himself  in  a  sheet  to  frighten 
his  fellows,  was  embarrassed  by  the  company  of 
a  real  ghost,  bent  on  the  same  errand;  and 
retired  from  the  enterprise,  leaving  it  wholly 
to  the  professional?  That,  at  any  rate,  is 
very  much  what  liappened  to  the  Romantic 
impersonators. 

Another  parallel  may  perhaps  be  found  in 
the  power  of  vulgarity  to  advance  civilization. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  question  of  manners. 
Politeness  is  a  codification  of  the  impulses  of 
a  heart  that  is  moved  by  good  will  and  consid- 
eration for  others.     If  the  impulses  are  not 


73  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

there,  the  politeness  is  so  far  unreal  and  in- 
sincere— a  cheap  varnish.  Yet  it  is  insisted  on 
by  society,  and  enforced  by  fear  and  fashion. 
If  the  forms  are  taught,  the  soul  of  them  may 
be,  and  sometimes  is,  breathed  in  later.  So 
this  imitative  and  timid  artifice,  this  conform- 
ity to  opinions  the  ground  and  meaning  of 
which  is  not  fully  understood,  becomes  a  great 
engine  of  social  progress.  Imitation  and  for- 
gery, which  are  a  kind  of  literary  vulgarity, 
were  the  school  of  Romanticism  in  its  nonage. 
Some  of  the  greater  poets  who  passed  this  way 
went  on  to  express  things  subtler  and  more 
profound  than  had  found  a  voice  in  the  poetry 
that  they  imitated. 

The  long  debate  on  the  so-called  poems  of 
Ossian  is  now  ended.  They  are  known  to  be  a 
not  very  skilful  forgery  by  James  Macpherson. 
Yet  their  importance  in  literary  history  re- 
mains undiminished,  and  the  life  of  Macpher- 
son has  a  curious  kind  of  pathos.  He  was  the 
creature  and  victim  of  the  Romantic  move- 
ment, and  was  led,  by  almost  insensible  degrees, 
into  supplying  fraudulent  evidence  for  the  fa- 
vorite Romantic  theory  that  a  truer  and  deeper 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  73 

vein  of  poetry  is  to  be  foimd  among  primitive 
peoples.  Collins's  Ode  on  the  Popular  Super- 
stitions of  the  Highlands  of  Scotland  and 
Gray's  Ba?'d  show  the  hterary  world  prepared 
to  put  itself  to  school  to  Celtic  tradition.  Mac- 
pherson  supplied  it  with  a  bodj^  of  poetry  which 
exactly  fulfilled  its  expectations.  The  crucial 
date  in  his  history  is  his  meeting  in  1759  with 
John  Home,  the  author  of  the  once  famous 
tragedy  of  Douglas.  In  the  summer  of  that 
year  Home  was  drinking  the  waters  at  Moffat, 
and  among  the  visitors  assembled  there  found 
Thomas  Graham,  afterwards  Lord  Lynedoch, 
then  a  bov  of  ten,  and  his  tutor,  James  Mac- 
pherson,  a  young  Highlander,  shy  and  ambi- 
tious, who  had  been  educated  at  Aberdeen  and 
Edinburgh,  and  had  dabbled  in  verse.  Home, 
full  of  the  literary  gossip  of  the  hour,  seized 
upon  the  opportunity  to  question  Macpherson 
concerning  the  poems  that  were  rumored  to 
have  survived  among  the  Gaelic-speaking  pop- 
ulation of  Scotland.  In  the  light  of  what  we 
now  know  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand  the 
genesis  of  this  great  European  fraud.  Mac- 
pherson was  proud  of  his  race,  which  he  had 


74  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

celebrated  in  an  heroic  poem  called  The  High- 
lander. He  had  interested  himself  in  Gaelic 
poetrj^  though  his  knowledge  of  the  tongue 
was  not  good,  and  he  had  by  him  some  frag- 
ments of  genuine  Gaelic  poems.  He  was  flat- 
tered by  Home's  appeal  to  him,  and,  feeling 
perhaps  that  the  few  and  slight  genuine  poems 
which  he  could  produce  would  hardly  warrant 
the  magnificence  of  his  allusions  to  Gaelic  lit- 
erature, he  forged  a  tale  in  poetic  prose,  called 
The  Death  of  Oscar,  and  presented  it  to  Home 
as  a  translation  from  the  Gaelic.  The  poem 
was  much  admired,  and  Macpherson,  unable 
now  to  retrace  his  steps  without  declaring  him- 
self a  cheat,  soon  produced  others  from  the 
same  source.  These  were  submitted  to  the  lit- 
erary society  of  Edinburgh,  with  the  great 
Dr.  Blair  at  its  head,  and  were  pronounced  to 
be  the  wonder  of  the  world.  From  this  point 
onward,  during  a  long  and  melancholy  life, 
poor  Macpherson  was  enslaved  to  the  fraud 
which  had  its  beginning  in  the  shyness  and 
vanity  of  his  own  character.  He  was  bound 
now  to  forge  or  to  fail ;  and  no  doubt  the  con- 
sciousness that  it  was  his  own  work  which 


IMITATION   AND    FORGERY  75 

called  forth  such  rapturous  applause  sup- 
ported him  in  his  labors  and  justified  him  to 
his  own  conscience.  A  subscription  was  easily- 
raised  in  Edinburgh  to  enable  him  to  travel 
and  collect  the  remains  of  Celtic  poetry.  For 
a  few  months  he  perambulated  the  western 
highlands  and  islands,  and  returned  to  Edin- 
burgh bringing  with  him  Fingal,  a  complete 
epic  poem  in  six  books.  This  was  followed  by 
Temora,  in  eight  books,  also  attributed  to  the 
great  Gaelic  bard  Ossian;  and  the  new  Celtic 
fashion  was  established. 

These  poems  had  an  immense  success. 
Everyone  knows  how  they  influenced  the 
youth  of  Goethe,  and  captured  the  imagina- 
tion of  Napoleon.  It  is  less  surprising  that 
they  enraptured  the  poet  Gray,  and  were  ap- 
proved by  the  professor  Blair,  for  they  were 
exactly  modelled  on  the  practice  and  theory 
of  these  two  critics.  All  the  fashionable  doc- 
trine of  that  age  concerning  the  history  of 
poetry  was  borne  out  by  these  works.  Poetry, 
so  it  was  held,  is  to  be  found  in  its  perfection 
only  in  primitive  society,  before  it  is  overlaid 
hy  the  complexities  of  modem  civilization.    Its 


76  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

most  perfect,  and  therefore  its  earliest,  form, 
is  the  epic;  and  Dr.  Blair  must  have  been  de- 
lighted to  find  that  the  laws  of  the  epic,  which 
he  so  often  explained  to  his  class  in  Edin- 
burgh University,  were  minutely  observed  by 
the  oldest  of  Scottish  bards.  He  died  without 
suspecting  that  the  inspiration  of  the  Ossianic 
poems  had  come  partly  from  himself. 

The  belief  that  Celtic  literature  is  essentially 
and  eternally  melancholy, —  a  belief  which  per- 
sisted down  to  the  time  of  Matthew  Arnold, 
also  drew  its  strength  from  the  poems  of  Os- 
sian.  Here  again  theory  showed  the  way  to 
practice.  The  melancholy  of  the  Ossianic 
poems  is  not  the  melancholy  of  the  Celt,  but  a 
melancholy  compounded  of  many  simples,  and 
extracted  from  works  that  were  held  in  high 
esteem  in  the  eighteenth  centuiy — Young's 
Night  Thoughts,  Blair's  Grave,  Gray's  Bard, 
and  the  soliloquies  of  Milton's  Satan. 

Macpherson  was  soon  challenged,  and  his 
whole  life  was  passed  in  a  brawl  of  controversy. 
Two  famous  men  dismissed  him  contemptu- 
ously. Dr.  Johnson,  who  knew  what  honesty 
means  among  scholars,  treated  him  as  an  impu- 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  77 

dent  impostor.  Wordsworth,  who  knew  what 
simpHcity  means  in  poetry,  declared  that  all 
the  imagery  of  the  poems  is  false  and  spm-ious. 
But  the  whole  question  early  became  a  national 
quarrel,  and  the  honor  of  Scotland  was  in- 
volved in  it.  There  are  signs  that  Macpherson 
would  gladly  have  escaped  from  the  storm  he 
had  raised.  Aided  by  his  early  literary  success, 
he  became  a  prosperous  man,  held  a  well-paid 
post  at  court,  entered  Parliament,  and  was 
pensioned  by  the  government.  Still  the  con- 
troversy persisted.  He  had  found  it  easy  to 
take  up  a  haughty  attitude  towards  those  hos- 
tile critics  who  had  doubted  his  good  faith  and 
had  asked  him  to  produce  his  Gaelic  originals. 
But  now  the  demand  for  the  originals  came 
from  his  champions  and  friends,  who  desired 
to  place  the  fame  of  Scotland's  oldest  and 
greatest  poet  on  a  sure  foundation.  He  wrig- 
gled on  the  hook,  and  more  than  once  timidly 
hinted  that  the  poems  owed  not  a  little  to  the 
poetic  genius  of  the  translator.  But  this  half- 
hearted attempt  to  rob  the  great  Ossian  of  a 
part  of  his  fame  stirred  the  Caledonian  en- 
thusiasts to  a  frenzy  of  indignation.    At  last, 


78  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

when  he  was  no  longer  able  to  restrain  his  sup- 
porters, the  wretched  Macpherson  found  no 
escape  but  one.  In  middle  age,  some  twenty 
years  after  his  first  appearance  on  the  poetic 
horizon,  he  sat  down,  with  a  heavy  heart  and 
an  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  Gaelic  tongue, 
to  forge  the  originals.  In  1807,  eleven  years 
after  his  death,  these  were  at  last  published. 
The  progress  of  genuine  Celtic  scholarship 
during  the  succeeding  century  did  the  rest; 
and  the  old  blind  bard  rejoined  the  mists  and 
vapors  which  were  the  inspiration  of  his  Muse.* 
The  poems  of  Ossian  are  only  one,  though 
perhaps  the  most  signal,  instance  of  the  for- 
geries which  prevailed  like  an  epidemic  at  the 
time  of  the  Romantic  Revival.  Some  of  these, 
like  Ireland's  Shakespeare  forgeries,  were  little 
better  than  cold-blooded  mercenary  frauds. 
Others,  like  Chatterton's  Rowley  Poems  and 
Horace  Walpole's  Castle  of  Otranto,  are  full 
of  the  zest  and  delight  of  play-acting.  Even 
Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner,  though  it  is  free 
from  the  reproach  of  forgery,  is  touched  by  the 

*  For  some  of  the  facts  in  this  account  of  Ossian  I  am 
indebted  to  Mr.  J.  S.  Smart's  fascinating  book,  James  Mac- 
pherson, an  Episode  in  Literature  (David  Nutt,  1905). 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  79 

same  spirit.  The  severe  morality  of  scholar- 
ship had  not  yet  been  applied  to  mediaeval  or 
modern  matter.  Scholars  are  the  trustees  of 
poets;  but  where  this  trust  is  undertaken  by 
men  who  are  poets  themselves,  there  is  usually 
a  good  deal  of  gaiety  and  exuberance  in  its 
performance. 

I  have  now  traced  some  of  the  neglected 
sources  of  revived  Romance,  and  have  shown 
how  in  this  movement,  more  notably,  perhaps, 
than  in  any  other  great  movement  in  literature, 
it  was  not  the  supply  which  created  the  de- 
mand, but  the  demand  which  created  the 
supply.  The  Romantic  change  was  wrought, 
not  by  the  energy  of  lonely  pioneers,  but  by  a 
shift  in  public  taste.  Readers  of  poetry  knew 
what  it  was  they  wanted,  even  before  they 
knew  whether  it  existed.  Writers  were  soon 
at  hand  to  prove  that  it  had  existed  in  the  past, 
and  could  still  be  made.  The  weakness  of 
vague  desire  is  felt  everywhere  in  the  origins 
of  the  change.  Out  of  the  weakness  came 
strength;  the  tinsel  Gothic  castle  of  Walpole 
was  enlarged  to  house  the  magnanimous  soul 
of  Scott;  the  Sorrows  of  Werther  gave  birth  to 
Faust. 


80  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

The  wealoiess  of  the  Romantic  movement, 
its  love  of  mere  sensation  and  sentiment,  is 
well  exhibited  in  its  effect  upon  the  sane  and 
strong  mind  of  Keats.  He  was  a  pupil  of 
the  Romantics;  and  poetry,  as  he  first  con- 
ceived of  it,  seemed  to  open  to  him  boundless 
fields  of  passive  enjoyment.  His  early  work 
shows  the  struggle  between  the  delicious  swoon 
of  reverie  and  the  growing  pains  of  thought. 
His  verse,  in  its  beginnings,  was  crowded  with 
"luxuries,  bright,  milky,  soft,  and  rosy."  He 
was  a  boy  at  the  time  of  England's  greatest 
naval  glory,  but  he  thinks  more  of  Robin 
Hood  than  of  Nelson.  If  Robin  Hood  could 
revisit  the  forest,  says  Keats, 

He  would  swear,  for  all  his  oaks 
Fallen  beneath  the  dockyard  strokes, 
Have  rotted  on  the  briny  seas. 

His  use  of  a  word  like  "rich,"  as  Mr.  Robert 
Bridges  has  remarked,  is  almost  inhuman  in 
its  luxurious  detachment  from  the  human 
situation. 

Now  more  than  ever  seems  it  rich  to  die, 
To  cease  upon  the  midnight  with  no  pain. 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY  81 

Or  if  thy  mistress  some  rich  anger  shows, 
Emprison  her  soft  hand,  and  let  her  rave. 

B}^  his  work  in  this  kind  Keats  became  the 
parent  and  founder  of  the  Aesthetic  School  of 
poetry,  which  is  more  than  half  in  love  with 
easeful  death,  and  seeks  nothing  so  ardently  as 
rest  and  escape  from  the  world.  The  epilogue 
to  the  Aesthetic  movement  was  written  by  Wil- 
liam Morris  before  ever  he  broke  out  from 
those  enchanted  bowers : 

So  with  this  earthly  paradise  it  is, 
If  ye  will  read  aright,  and  pardon  me 
Who   strive   to  build   a  shadowy  isle   of  bliss 
Midmost  the  beating  of  the  steely  sea, 
Where  tossed  about  all  hearts  of  men  must  be. 

Whose  ravening  monsters  mighty  men  must  slay. 

Not  the  poor  singer  of  an  empty  day. 

Yet  there  is  another  side  to  the  work  of 
Keats,  more  wonderful  in  its  broken  promise 
than  all  the  soft  perfections  of  his  tender 
Muse.  He  grew  tired  of  imitation  and  ease. 
Weakness  may  exclude  the  world  by  forget- 
ting it;  only  strength  can  conquer  the  world. 
What  if  this  law  be  also  the  law  of  beauty? 
The  thought  inspires  his  last  great  attempt, 


83  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

the  fragment  of  Hyperion.  Men  have  their 
dynasties  and  revolutions;  but  the  immortals 
also,  whom  men  worship,  must  change  to  live. 

So  on  our  heels  a  fresh  perfection  treads, 
A  power  more  strong  in  beauty. 

And  this  power  cannot  be  won  by  those  who 
shirk  the  challenge  of  ugly  facts. 

O  folly !  for  to  bear  all  naked  truths. 
And  to  envisage  circumstance,  all  calm, 
That  is  the  top  of  sovereignty. 

As  if  to  enforce  his  thought  by  repetition, 
Keats  made  an  allegorical  framework  for  his 
revised  version  of  the  poem.  There  he  exhibits 
himself  as  wandering  among  the  delights  of  the 
garden  of  this  life,  and  indulging  himself  to 
the  point  of  drunkenness.  Awaked  from  his 
swoon,  he  finds  himself  at  the  steps  of  the 
temple  of  fame.  He  is  told  he  must  climb  or 
die.  After  an  agony  of  struggle  he  mounts  to 
the  top,  and  has  speech  there  with  a  veiled  fig- 
ure, who  tells  him  that  this  temple  is  all  that 
has  been  spared  in  the  war  between  the  rival 
houses  of  the  Gods.     When  he  asks  why  he 


IMITATION    AND    FORGERY       '  83 

has  been  saved  from  death,  the  veiled  figure 
makes  reply: 

"None  can  usurp  this  height,"  return'd  that  shade, 
"But  those  to  whom  the  miseries  of  the  world 
Are  misery,  and  will  not  let  them  rest." 

•  •  •  •  •  • 

"Are  there  not  thousands  in  the  world,"  said  I, 
Eneourag'd  by  the  sooth  voice  of  the  shade, 

"Who  love  their  fellows  even  to  the  death, 
Who  feel  the  giant  agony  of  the  world. 
And  more,  like  slaves  to  poor  humanity, 
Labour  for  mortal  good?     I  sure  should  see 
Other  men  here,  but  I  am  here  alone." 

"Those  whom  thou  spakest  of  are  no  visionaries," 
Rejoined  that  voice;  "they  are  no  dreamers  weak; 
They  seek  no  wonder  but  the  human  face. 
No  music  but  a  happy-noted  voice : 
They  come  not  here,  they  have  no  thought  to  come ; 
And  thou  art  here,  for  thou  art  less  than  they. 
What  benefit  canst,  thou  do,  or  all  thy  tribe, 
To  the  great  world?     Thou  art  a  dreaming  thing, 
A  fever  of  thyself:  think  of  the  earth; 
What  bliss,  even  in  hope,  is  there  for  thee? 
What  haven?     every  creature  hath  its  home. 
Every  sole  man  hath  days  of  joy  and  pain. 
Whether  his  labours  be  sublime  or  low — 
The  pain  alone,  the  joy  alone,  distinct: 
Only  the  dreamer  venoms  all  his  days, 
Bearing  more  woe  than  all  his  sins  deserve." 


84,  IMITATION    AND    FORGERY 

In  this,  which  is  ahnost  his  last  dehberate 
utterance,  Keats  expresses  his  sense  of  the  fu- 
tihty  of  romance,  and  seems  to  condemn  poetry 
itself.  A  condemnation  of  the  expression  of 
profomid  thought  in  beautiful  forms  would 
come  very  ill  from  Keats,  but  this  much  he 
surely  had  learned,  that  poetry,  the  real  high 
poetry,  cannot  be  made  out  of  dreams.  The 
worst  of  dreams  is  that  you  cannot  discipline 
them.  Their  tragedy  is  night-mare;  their 
comedy  is  nonsense.  Only  what  can  stand  se- 
vere discipline,  and  emerge  the  purer  and 
stronger  for  it,  is  fit  to  endure.  For  all  its  sins 
of  flatness  and  prosiness  the  Classical  School 
has  always  taught  discipline.  No  doubt  it  has 
sometimes  trusted  too  absolutely  to  discipline, 
and  has  given  us  too  much  of  the  foot-rule  and 
the  tuning-fork.  But  one  discipline,  at  least, 
poetry  cannot  afford  to  neglect — the  discipline 
of  facts  and  life.  The  poetry  that  can  face  this 
ordeal  and  survive  it  is  rare.  Some  poets  are 
tempted  to  avoid  the  experience  and  save  the 
dream.  Others,  who  were  poets  in  their 
youth,  undergo  the  experience  and  are  beaten 
by  it.  But  the  poetry  which  can  bear  all  naked 
truth  and  still  keep  its  singing  voice  is  the  only 
immortal  poetry. 


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